Ambivalence in A Dance of the Forests

Sudha K.P. “Soyinka's Vision of Life as Projected in His Major Works ”, Department of English , University of Calicut, 2004

Chapter 11

Ambivalence in A Dance of the Forests

A Dance of the Forests was written for the independence celebrations

of Nigeria in 1960. As a mythopoeist, Soyinka feels committed to put the

rich, usable African past into perspective as the source of an ongoing process

of continuity and growth. He dedicates himself to enlighten the hearts of his

readers, whether African or not, by expl'oring into the world of African

mythology, especially, the myth of Ogun. The play significantly reveals, for

the fust time, the playwright's political inclinations, the anxiety he had about

life in general and the hture of his nation in particular. The play emphasises

the need to restore the African cultural identity as a major element of social

development. Nigeria, like Kenya, and any other colonized countries, is a

creation of British imperialism. We can see in Nigeria, the forcible

amalgamation of different people with different languages and widely

diverse cultures. Gifted with the power of foreseeing the future of his

country, Soyinka warns his people of the impending class and factional

conflicts, economic crises and political chaos. He warns the natives about the

fragile arena of the nation state that has gained independence. Though one of

the most fearless among the political activists of African writers involved in

some of the most deadly events in Nigeria, Africa and the world and one

who has suffered terribly from activism, Soyinka has often tried to separate

his commitment to political causes Erom what he considers to be his artistic

vocation. He has never presented his art as a part of this activism. Still in A

Dance of the Forests is discernible the political commitment which leads to

the exposure of the corrupt politicians who destroy the country's unity,

integrity as well as development. In this chapter it is proposed to view A

Dance Of The Forests as a work that projects his dynamic mythic vision,

which also embodies for the first time, his political philosophy. This

philosophy very clearly reveals his philosophy of life. It also gives a broad

hint as to what role a postcolonial citizen shall play to lead his country to

progress.

In his most complex satirical play, A Dance Of The Forests, Soyinka

displays his obsession with truth by talking about death, despair and

disillusionment that await this new-born nation at a time of the highly joyous

occasion of its independence. We fmd here a stroke of bold imagination

which points at the depth and sincerity of Soyinka's vision. Adrian Roscoe

has stressed this aspect in his Mother is Gold "Here indeed was a stroke of

bold imagination that pointed up the breadth, depth and sincerity of vision;

for in a play offered to a nation on the euphoric occasion of its independence,

the immediate victim of the satire is that nation itself; in a play ostensibly

celebrating a country's birth, the talk is all of death, delusion and betrayal"

(220). An intermingling of traditional and Western elements, a juxtaposing

of materials from all cultures; the Christian and the Yourba myths for the

purpose of illustrating his arguments can be observed in the play A Dance of

the Forests is an aesthetic expression of Soyinkas' philosophical

ambivalence, which is actually the pivot of the eclecticism of his theatre.

As in other works, the use of ritual decides the ultimate meaning of A

Dance of the Forests. It proclaims Soyinka's unrelenting obsession with the

Ogun myth and its complicated reenactments through ritual. It convincingly

proves that his is a mythic imagination. As Stanley Macebuh points out:

"Soyinka is fust and foremost a mythopoeist; his imagination is in a quite

fundamental sense a mythic imagination" (210). Soyinka's works in general,

and A Dance of the Forests in particular, have the reputation of being

ambiguous, dense and opaque. This reputation for ambiguity is all the more

complicated by his effort to proffer mythic explanations and resolutions for

social problems. This way of viewing life is not something new. Joseph

Campbell convincingly explains in "The Historical Development of

Mythology" that, 'WO human society has yet been found in which such

mythological motifs have not been rehearsed in liturgies, interpreted by

seers, poets, theologians or philosophers; presented in art, magnified in song,

and ecstatically experienced in life-empowering visions" (19). The Yoruba

cosmology has always been central to his works and has provided incentive

for growth to his artistic development. His works do succeed in emphatically

asserting that he values the traditional system which functions as a sort of

fiame work to all his plays. This traditional system allows him to explore

creation and existence fiom a philosophical base. It is this attitude that has

guided him in his confident interrogation of the principles of Negritude and

it lies behind his satiric approach towards the proud arguments of the

advocates of Negritude. Soyinka's famous quip, "A tiger does not proclaim

its tigritude, he pounces" was quoted and misquoted, attacked and defended

throughout the 1960s and the early 70s. But Soyinka was not disturbed, for

what he found missing in the Negritudists was a lack of celebration of the

essence of the past. There was only a celebration of convenient symbols and

trophies fiom the past. On the other hand Soyinka never renounces the

essence of the past. He reacts to it in the most spontaneous and natural

manner. Edward Said, has used a term 'nativism' to indicate the desire "to

celebrate and return to a preimperial unsullied past by rejecting the tradition

of the colonizer". (Kildahl 973). This return to the pre-imperial unsullied

past is an inevitable development in recovering from the oppression and

humiliation of colonialism. But too much veneration of the past is indeed an

obstacle for achieving true liberation. "To remain at a stage of nativism is to

accept the consequences of imperialism, the rural, the religious and political

divisions imposed by imperialism itself. To revaluate the hierarchy is no

escape fiom hierarchical and 'us versus them' thinking" (Kildahl973).

Soyinka wants to overcome the obstacles of too much adoration of the

past. Thus he is often seen raising an eyebrow at the unquestioned

acceptance of the past and blind admirations for the ancient rulers. For

Soyinka, the ancients were in no way superior just because they built huge

empires. They were capable of frightening monstrosities and shocking

selfishness too. He even questions the decisions of the Gods who are very

callous and harsh in their dealings with men. Mata Kharibu, the hypocrite

ruler and Madame Tortoise, the characterless queen do not stand for an

enviably smooth and glorious past and they do not belong to the past only.

As Eldred Jones has pointed out in his "The Essential Soyinka", "Both men

and gods are arraignment in A Dance of the Forests. Of both the past and the

present, of both men and gods, Soyinka is apt to raise the most embarrassing

questions. This is where his greatest value lies - and his greatest personal

danger; he is an irritant to complacency and a wet blanket to romance." ( l l).

Soyinka would appear to have anticipated what postcolonial theorists like

Gayathri Spivak and V.Y. Mudimbe were to announce years later. His quip

against Negritude and the much discussed A Dance of the Forests are

indicative of this. His essays like "The Future of West African Writing",

"From a Common Cloth and his plays like Madmen and Specialists also

articulate the argument that "independence does not necessarily mean that

the colonial episteme has been ruptured (Olaniyan 494).

Africa had to suffer under colonial rule for decades. It has not freed

itself fully from the vestiges of colonialism yet. Afi-ican nationalism has

overtaken the colonial powers and has emerged triumphant. But it has yet to

give itself a new direction and order to cope with the complications of the

colonial legacy. African literature is a representation of the crisis within the

African societies which had risen due to the colonial impact. So the writers

of Africa, like the writers of other colonized countries were faced with the

responsibilities of both dealing with the complications of colonialism as well

as representing the crises in their works. But the uniqueness of the African

writers lies in their power to overcome the several limitations which they had

to face when they took upon themselves the role of the guardians of African

conscience. The primary aim of the artist being the depiction of truth about

living processes, he might choose as his chief target the exposure and

denunciation of falsehood. There defmitely will be problem in contemporary

Africa in the context of colonial heritage. But moral responsibility lies within

the individual as much as in the culture milieu. African literature has

depicted the crisis and contradictions faced by the African people. The

creative writers of Africa have a clear vision of the ideal society for which

they have to combine the best of the old cultural traditions with the

enlightened ideas of the modern world. The African writers have also

expressed their resentment against corruption in the independent African

states, and they have protested against the authoritarian forces which are

trying to misuse the freedom gained from the colonial powers. African poets

and writers have pinpointed the mistakes in human history, and

contemporary African literature is yet another protest against the totalitarian

tendencies and the political groups which hold the humanity in a constant

state of peril. A Dance Of The Forests shows that the modem society is in no

way better than the ancient society, for, in the past as well as in the present,

the plight of the artist as well as the common man remains unchanged.

It is obvious that Soyinka's works lack the sense of conventional

nostalgia. They never express any sentimentally melancholic recollection of

a dying world. Instead, it becomes clear that he does not reject the modem

world with its new insights and the scientific knowledge. It is an absorption,

adaptation and modem grafting on a strong traditional plant that we see in

his works. Adrian Roscoe remarks in his Mother is Gold most appropriately:

His education in Nigeria and England has enabled him to absorb

much that is modem; he is learned in the modem disciplines and

his style itself is of absorption and adaptation. A modem grafting

has been performed on a vigorous traditional plant. Or to state in

his own way, he has achieved the ideal fusion - to preserve the

original uniqueness and yet absorb another essence. (28)

In his expository book, Myth Literature and African World Soyinka has

discussed the rituals and myths which inspired and conditioned his drama.

His use of rituals in drama offers us a way to transcend the temporal and

draw upon the resources of primal reality. A Dance of the Forests, and The

Road are mature works which employ ritual elements. The author's aim in

these plays is to establish the metaphysical sense of transition between the

present moment and the flux of existence, past, present and future. Soyinka

has been naturally tuned to the Yourba Culture. He has shown great

scholarly interest in it, leading to the formation of theory of Yourba tragedy.

His major works, A Dance of the Forests, The Road, Death and The Kings

Horseman and The Strong Breed and The Bachae of Euripedes all closely

follow the theory of tragedy as developed by him.

An attempt has been made in this chapter to examine A Dance Of The

Forests as a play modelied on the theory of tragedy, a play where Ogun myth

is treated in all seriousness. In A Dance of the Forests, a complex work, we

find the intelligent and dramatic use of Ogun myth, ritual, mime and dance

and spectacle. With the help of these devises, Soyinka excellently

communicates to the audience a sense of continuity between past and

present, of the relationship between mankind's collective experience and the

primeval fears and desires of the individual. Ogun myth is explored in its

depth in A Dance of the Forests. Ogun is the embodiment of creative will.

His descent into the chthonic realm, his daring of the gulf of transition, is the

prototype of all true artistic endeavor of which he is the patron. The

significance of A Dance Of The Forests is that it is the only play where Ogun

appears in human form.

Before analyzing how Soyinka explores the myth of Ogun in A Dance

of the Forests and how closely it follows the theory of tragedy formulated by

him, it is useful to restate in a simplified way the relationship he establishes

between ritual and drama.

He views ritual as the source of drama because ritual consists in

bridging the gulf between the deities and mankind and to him tragedy,

in Yoruba traditional drama, is the anguish of this severance, the

fragmentation of essence from self. As ritual is the language of the

masses, it leads to the liberation of social consciousness" (Richard

69).

Ogun is the central figure in the pantheon of Yoruba gods. He f ~ s t dared to

enter the abyss that separated human beings from their gods, the dead and

the unborn. He formed a bridge to span the abyss. It was an act of courage

which risked extinction and disintegration of the personality. Wole Soyinka

himself has explained the importance of God Ogun to him on many

occasions. To quote his own words from an interview with Jeffiey A.

Portnoy, ". . . he was the pioneer deity - he was the one who actually

plunged into this abyss of transition, to hack through primordial chaos and

forge a path to man, that is the world of the living" (2). This was an act of

will and the god became the symbol of active creativity. He was the God of

war and poetry. He became the God of the destructive and the creaative

principle thus having in him both the creative and destructive aspects. Ritual

drama, then is the retelling of the Ogun myth. Thus the protagonist in a

drama which draws fiom ritual experience "enters the abyss, the inner world

of primal reality and brings back its essence which he or she communicates

to the choric participants of the rites - the community" (Banks 1041).

As it has been discussed, the myth of Ogun, the god who risked the

dangers of the abyss and created a road from the spiritual to the human

world, is the key to an understanding of all Soyinka's work. Soyinka argues

that man has a dual nature whether he be African or American. What makes

Soyinka's drama so unique is its metaphysical dimension basedon his

personal rendering of Yoruba myth. It assumes the compartmentalized

existence of three worlds, the world of the dead, the living and the unborn

and the existence of another fourth realm called 'the Fourth Stage'. It is this

realm which links the living with their ancestors and with the future. Soyinka

employs the terms 'transition' for the terrifying experience of the nurninous

fourth stage. Again to quote from his interview, with Jeffi-ey A. Portnoy,

The Yoruba recognize three principal worlds : the world of the

ancestor, the world of the present - the living - and the world of

the unborn. These worlds are interrelated in very vivid and

effective ways. It is really an internalized apprehension of reality

and of course around these and wearing through these areas of

existence is what I call the area of transition through which all the

energies pass in the motion between one world and the other (2).

We have seen that it is the story of Ogun that underlies Soyinka's theory and

practice of drama. He is the hero-god who created a passage between gods

and men out of the primordial chaos. But the battle in which he slew not only

his enemies but also his own people in a drunken stupor demonstrated that in

spite of his heroism he could belong to their world as a destroyer also. This

is the logical explanation of the conviction of Soyinka that human history is

a never ending cycle of destruction and creation. Even though new

beginnings must be made by heroic individuals, they are all doomed to end

in failure. Thus for Soyinka, drama represents "the passage-rites of hero

gods, a projection of man's conflict with forces which challenge his efforts

to harmonize with his environment" (Myth 36).

Soyinka was so much influenced by his patron god that it can be

argued that like Ogun, Soyinka himself has sought "to build a bridge

between the philosophy of the West and Yoruba religion and cosmology, in

order to demonstrate the latter's universality" (Phelps 8:339). Obviously

Soyinka has consistently applied his Yoruba mythology in all his work. He

believes that it provides a truer and more comprehensive vision of reality

than anything the West can offer. May be, like Olunde of Death and The

Kings Horseman, Soyinka fiom his own personal experiences as a student

and a teacher at many foreign universities, has understood that his native

tradition, Yoruba, is the most inspiring source of meaning and depth when

compared to the Western belief system.. The West suffered fiom "the

fragmentation that is the inevitable result of its rationalist and materialist

intellectual traditions." (Phelps 8:341). It is difficult for the West to

understand and respond to the content and the metaphysical implications of

the Yoruba myth because it seems bewilderingly remote to Western modes

of thought and feeling. All the plays of Wole Soyinka are remarkable for the

rare depiction of both religion and ritual with complete conviction and

without strain or artificiality. The key play in this development is A Dance

Of The Forests. It is highly significant for its exploration of the Ogun myth

and the recognition of the three planes of existence the living, the dead and

the unborn and of the fantastic unification of both the living and the dead and

of the men and gods. Kofi Awonoor comments in "The Breast of the Earth":

"The effectiveness of A Dance Of The Forests lies in its elaborate use of a

significant segment of the Yoruba pantheon for the purpose of seeking a

unity between men and gods and between the living and the dead (35).

In A Dance of the Forests, we fmd the most complex treatment of the

chthonic realm of transition. A close reading of this work reveals that a

reinterpretation and personal appropriation in terms of Yoruba cosmology is

done here. A reinterpretation of the Yoruba cosmology exists in all his works

as an authentic mode of vision. He effectively dramatizes Yoruba belief in

the mutual dependence of the differing areas of existence. We fmd a

recurrent use of symbols of gods and spirits, myth, ritual, song, dance and

mime. Generally, "the plays move from ordinary realism to ritual enactment

with the nonverbal elements of dance, song and masquerade receiving

increasing prominence as the climax approaches" (Moody 25). A Dance of

the Forests depends heavily on ritual, with all its accompanying music,

mime, dance and masquerade. Lars Gyllensten of the Swedish Academy has

commented on Soyinka's frequent and skilful use of the elements belonging

to stage, dance, rites, masques, pantomime, rhythm and the music and theatre

within the theatre. They are incorporated into the works of Soyinka so

naturally that they never appear as a mask but as an integral part of the plays.

"The myths, traditions and rites are integrated as nourishment for his writing,

not as a masquerade costume." (qtd. in Gibbs, Wole Soyinka 25)

In A Dance of the Forests, the concept of the forest as the abode of

secret forces always interacting with mortal life and that of the dance as the

visible representation of an interplay between one plane of reality and

another is changed into an artistic work. The true passage of an entity from

one level to another is marked by an indispensable rite of transition.

According to the belief of the Micans: no man can pass directly from one

state of life to the next without fully abandoning the old stage. Such a

transitional phase may be marked by a sojourn in the secret groves of the

forest. This approach adds to the significance of the ritual of sacrifice in A

Dance of the Forests and the change that happens to Demoke, at the end of

the play.

A Dance of the Forests was written and performed for the Nigerian

independence celebrations in 1960, an occasion represented in the play as

"the Gathering of Tribes." The play emerged at a significant formative

moment in the history of Mica . Thejumola Olaniyan describes that @the

purpose of the play is "the celebration of a geopolitical transformation of a

stage in the historic encounter between M i c a and Western World (489). It

is a highly individualistic play. Its explorations of new visions are as

multidimensional and as diversified as the human psyche itself. With the

exploration of Yoruba myth, Soyinka tries to convince his audience that they

should let go their sleepy state, awaken from their slumber and recover the

values of beauty, order, joy, justice and redemption from the abyss of terror,

humiliation and despair. Only a vision that transcends all conventional

values can lead the country to a healthy future. Gerald Moore remarks in his

article "The Use of Myth, An Examination of African Revolutionary Drama"

aptly thus: "Through A Dance of the Forests Soyinka stresses the need for

individual self-discovery and offer a humanistic, syncretic and cross cultural

vision capable of transcending stultifying conventional values and enforced

In A Dance of the forest,^ a subtle and complex text is wedded to

traditional performance skills and patterns. The play's basic structure is

deceptively simple. Since A Dance Of The Forests was meant for the

occasion of the independence of Nigeria, Soyinka had to choose a theme that

was relevant to his country at that point of time. Whenever a country

achieves independence, it has to undergo a transitional period in her history

marked by the end of the colonial rule and the beginning of postcolonial

freedom. Though the nation has been freed of the colonial rule and

oppression, it is now entrusted with the new responsibility of building itself

along a progressive path by following some great ideals set by the ancestors

and gods. In other words, a newly independent nation has to face the

dilemma as to whether it has to shape its present in line with the past or to

forget the past completely and begin afresh. Wole Soyinka is invoking the

self-determining powers of the colonized people. The moment of gaining

independence, for any nation in that case, is a historical moment, a rare

moment. When India gained independence Jawaharlal Nehru announced the

moment as 'historical and rare', 'an earth changing move from an old world

into a new' "when the soul of a nation, long suppressed finds utterance" Q/kd (Ellek Boehmer 18 1). It is such a moment that is selected by Wole Soyinka 4

for dramatic treatment in A Dance Of The Forests. But far from expressing it

in a straight forward and transparent manner, he articulates it through the

rich and complex African myths. As Tejumola Olaniyan puts it "A Dance Of

The Forests contains profound explorations of the irksome questions of (the)

postcolonial history that (Soyinka) later clarified in plays, essays, and

interviews, and for which (he is) known today" (489). A brief outline of the

Soyinka depicts is based on one of the ancient Sudanic kingdoms fi-om

which the contemporary Yoruba descended. Soyinka calls this world the

court of Mata Kharibu which parallels the contemporary world of the Yoruba ,;h 7L-L

township. It shows that despite their differences past andpresent they share a n

continuous pattern of human effort, pain, cruelty and achievement. The

pattern remains unchanged.

The principal divine actor in the play is Forest Father who appears

before the mortals as a man called Obaneji. Through his messenger, Aroni,

Forest Father makes it clear that the two representatives fi-om the past - the

Dead man and the Dead woman - were in previous life linked in violence

and blood with four of the living in the court of Mata Kharibu. These four

people are Rola, Demoke, Adnebi and Agboreko, Elder of the Sealed lips.

Rola, a prostitute was nicknamed Madame Tortoise eternally. Demoke is a

carver now. He was a poet in the empire of Mata Khribu.. Adnebi is the

council orator now and then court historian. Agboreko, Elder of the sealed

lips, is a type of sooth sayer in both existences.

Dead man was the conscientious warrior in his early life and Dead

woman, his pregnant wife. The four are representatives of the living world

drawn into the forests by the Forest Head to let the living condemn

themselves to face the truths about themselves - that they are "perpetrators,

abetters, and accessories of the inhuman order" (Olaniyan 494). They are

meant "to underline the continuity of human nature and the repetition of

history." As Eldred Jones puts it, history is viewed "as a nearly cyclical

movement." Contrary to what the living would like to believe the past was

not glorious or happy, no more glorious and happy than the present is

Nothing has changed. Society and human beings have remained the same.

There was and there is violence. Corruption, pervades. As the Dead Woman

remarks, in the play 'A hundred generations has made no difference / I was a

fool to come' (25).

Demoke, Aroni tells us, has been guilty of killing his apprentice

Oremole, the devotee of Oro, god of punishment and the dead. Demoke felt

jealous of Oremole because he could climb greater heights. This act places

the gods Ogun and Oro, in bitter enmity over Demoke. Ogun is the protector

of Demoke. As it is sung, "the lion never allows any body to play with his

cub / Ogun will never allow his child to be punished." Demoke intensifies

the anger and hostility of Oro by carving araba tree, the silk cotton tree

sacred to Oro, god of punishment and the dead. Hence Oro decides to take

revenge upon Demoke through one of his own aspects, Eshuoro, 'the way

ward flesh of Oro.'

The climactic action which gives the play its title is the dance. It is a

spectacular masque in which the fate of the woman's long unborn child, the

Half-child, is decided. Through the intervention of Ogun, the half child is

restored to the woman thereby redeeming the bloody cycle of history.

Demoke takes this challenging decision. His daring action is the climbing of

the totem he has carved because he has a fear of heights. Again with Ogun's

help he survives Eshuoro's attempt at revenge. The play closes with a

reunion of the living which hints at a possible human reformation as a result

of Demoke's action. What is suggested is that an individual's action of

daring and courage will definitely save a country from falling into the depths

of destruction and damnation. Regeneration is possible through acts of will

and courage. As Mary David remarks "No other context was so apt for the

mythopoetic playwright to preach his spiritual lesson in regeneration as this

historic moment of a nations' coming-in-being" (A Quest, 63).

The central play-within-the play takes all the characters back to the

ancient court of the warrior-king, Mata Kharibu. It draws parallels between

each of the crimes committed by the human beings in the present with an

ancient equivalent crime committed in a previous life. In the present,

Demoke, the carver of trees, has murdered his apprentice out of jealousy for

his climbing ability. In the past, as a court poet he was responsible for the

death of his novice whom he pushed down from the roof of the palace. Rola,

the present day courtesan, responsible for the deaths of two of her lovers, had

in her previous incarnation as Madame Tortoise caused similar tragedy

among her palace guards. Adenebi accepts a bribe in the present to pass the

lorry Incinerator' as suitable for carrying seventy passengers when it was

only designed for forty. In this action, we find the folly being repeated, the

folly of his previous life where too he had accepted a bribe fiom the slave

dealer.

As Demoke passionately relives the exultation of the act itself saying

thus: 'Down, down I plucked him, screaming on Oro.1 Before he made hard

obeisance to his earth./ My axe was executioner at Oro's neck. Alone./

Alone, I cut the strands that mocked me, till dead. And boastful slave lay

side by side, and I Demoke, sat on the shoulders of the tree./ My spirit set

fiee and singing, my hands. My father's hands possessed by demands of

blood" (27).

While, the townsfolk, far away, are intent upon 'the gathering of the

tribes' the Forest Father is making all necessary arrangements for the self

recovery of the dead and the living. There are three parts for the ceremony.

First is the enactment of the scene in the empire of the African emperor Mata

Kharibu and his Queen Madame Tortoise which took place eight centuries

ago. It also reveals the integrity and heroism of the warrior who was

emasculated and enslaved for being loyal to his curious concept of honour.

This leads to the tragic plight of his faithful wife who collapses hearing

about his punishment The second scene is the questioning of the dead pair.

They give an account of themselves and of the reasons for their presence

there. The Dead Woman regards herself as a symbol of all mothers cheated

by death of her fulfilment: "Wet runnels. / Of the earth brought me hither I

call Forest Head. Say someone comes. For all the rest. Say someone asks - 1

Was it for this, for this. Children plagued their mothers? (60). She is relieved

of the burden, but she is delivered of only a half child. The third part of the

ceremony is the Dance of welcome of the Dead, which the living have

refused to perform. The three mortals are masked and through these masks

speak the spirits of the unborn - spirits of the palm, the Darkness and the

Waters. They are respectively Rola, Demoke and Adenebi. The Dead Man,

Woman and Half-child want to know whether the future ages will offer that

gleam of light refused by the past and the present.

Two beautiful poetic passages fiom Soyinka are worth quoting here.

HALF CHILD. I who yet await a mother

Feel this dread

Feel this dread

I who flee from comb

To branded wombs.

I'll be born dead (64)

DEAD WOMAN. Better not now the bearing

Better not to bear the wearing

I who grow the branded navel

Sudden at the visitation

Shall my breast again be severed

From its rights of sanctity?

child, your hand is pure as sorrow

Free me of the endless burden

Let this gourd, let this gourd

Break beyond my health? (70)

There ensues a scene of great excitement and tension in which the half child

is tossed to and fro by the Triplets. It is Demoke who puts an end to this

moment by handing the half child to the Dead Woman, thereby hoping to

save him from being eternally ground by the wheel of birth and death. The

final words of the forest father, as he closes the dance, suggested that

Demoke may have opened a way for his own redemption.

FOREST FATHER. Yet I must do this alone, and no more,

Since to intervene is to be guilty of contradictions, and yet to

remain. Unfelt is to make my long rumoured. Ineffectuality

complete : hoping that When I have tortured awareness from

their souls, that perhaps, only perhaps in new. .. . . .. . beginnings

.. . . . .Aroni, does Demoke know the meaning of his act? (EL 76)

ARONI. Demoke, you hold a doomed thing in your hand. It is no

light matter to reverse the deed that was begun many lives

ago. The forest will not betyon pass (82).

In the final scene, the villagers are dancing round a silhouette of the totem

carved by Demoke. Eshuoro forces Demoke to climb the carved totem

carrying a sacrificial basket on his head. The basket represents the burden of

his own guilt. Demoke, as he falls down from the totem, which had been set

fue by Esuhuoro, is saved by Ogun. Ogun leaves him on the forestage.

Demoke's father comes there to fmd three chastened mortals just awakening

to themselves. The meaning of the central event of the play appears to be

ambivalent and Wole Soyinka seems to suggest that the modern Africans

need not depend totally on the past and the ancestors, but accept the

responsibility of owning up their actions, improving their life independently

and shaping their future properly. Soyinka is very ambiguous about the

future of the country, because of corruption in bureaucracy, exploitation of

countless citizens, etc. The only way to improve the future of the country is

through the spiritual awakening and expiation of their sins and crimes.

A Dance Of The Forests, like Death and the King's Horseman, The

Road, The Strong Breed, and other plays closely follows the theory of

tragedy formulated by Soyinka which is centered on the myth of Ogun. This

is the only play in which Ogun is given a prominent role to play in the form

of a human being. To quote Jonathan A Peters: "Soyinka's fascination with

Ogun is very much in view in A Dance Of The Forests, the only play in

which the god takes form as a character and an important one, in the

unfolding drama" ( 163).

Perhaps the significance of the play has been summed up by Thomas

Banks most vividly:

The play dramatizes (Soyinka's) inner acceptance of his human

nature, his admission of guilt, and his redemption through the

saving of Half-child. Soyinka seems to suggest that all salvation is

essentially personal and must follow the path of self - awareness,

confession and risk - a rite of passage across the abyss' that

separates man and gods. The play thus offers both a tragic vision

of life and hope for the future through the courageous acts of

individual men. It also identifies the artist as the key provoker of

self awareness. Like Demoke, he is closest to the abyss; he

possesses the fmgers of the dead (1849).

"The Fourth Stage", an essay that interprets the myth of Ogun, discusses the

three stages of Ogun's nature, 'the crossing of the primordial marsh', the

disastrous battle on behalf of the people of Ire and his descent and settlement

in Ire. In the interpretation of the rituals of Ogun's worshippers, Soyinka

sees the Ogun's 'crossing of the primordial marsh' reenacted. The tragic

victim struggles with a sense of disintegration in the abyss. He is also

endowed with the power of having visions. He is gifted with an acute

awareness of birth and death. Thus he becomes the spokesman of God, 'the

unresisting mouth piece of god (Gibbs, "The Origin" 67) whose action

transforms his anguish into creative purpose. He is now totally fiee fiom the

destructive despair. Ogun is Soyinka's patron god. So he relates these

patterns of Ogun's exploits with his own as a Yoruba tragic dramatist.

Soyinka suggests that the dramatist begins with the protagonists "stripped of

his excrescences, crushed and robbed of his self consciousness" (Myth 15 1).

The protagonist experiences the dissolution of self in the abyss. But by an

exercise of will he is able to triumph over subsummation and he emerges

with the sensitivity of the artist.

Viewed from this angle, Demoke's nature can be described as echoing

all the divine attributes of his guardian and protector Ogun. When Demoke

leaps to save the half-child, he is attempting a tragic action in the void. The

void is that area which separates one kind of existence from another. When

Demoke attempts to climb the araba tree with a sacrificial basket on his

head, he is bravely facing the perils of disintegration which assail all those

who venture into the gulf of transition. His fall from the burning tree and his

snatching up by Ogun may be seen as a symbolic enactment of death and

birth. Jarnes Gibbs' interpretation of the character of Demoke is worth

quoting here.

Demoke reenacts Ogun's 'Crossing of the primordial marsh'.

Demoke is f i s t stripped of excrescences or in Forest Head's

words, shown 'the mirror of original nakedness'. He has to

become aware that like Ogun, he is both creative and destructive,

both carver and murderer. He is then drawn into the abyss, in the

form of "the welcome of the D e a d at which point he becomes the

unresisting mouth piece of the god, symbolic of transitional abyss.

During the 'Dance of the Half-child' he asserts his will and

impulsively enters the dance. Moments later during the 'dance of

the Unearthing sacrifice' he again reasserts himself this time to

such good effect that the forces of destruction are thrown into

disarray. He falls from the totem, and cleansed by the air is

preserved to stand as it were beside himself, observant,

understanding, creative, blessed with insight ("The Origin" 67-

68).

Whether Demoke has managed to emerge wiser is a matter of interpretation.

But he has at least tried to do something creative. This is similar to the

promethean instinct of rebellion which will divert anguish into a creative act.

This attempt is sufficient to release man from a totally destructive despair.

The warning that the play gives is clear: there is danger ahead if nothing is

changed. But no more than the Forest Head, can the playwright propose any

solution to the spectators: The play ends in uncertainty on both levels. This is

intentionally done by the author and he refuses to offer a defmite

denouement. R. Fraser points out that there are four alternative endings to

the play. But no clear message is conveyed as to what should be done. The

Forest Head is incapable of taking any decisions for the human beings. The

playwright is incapable of deciding for the audience. The only thing they can

do is to give an opportunity to the human beings or the spectators to become

aware of the need for a change.

Like Ogun, the main protagonist of the play, Demoke combines in

him both the creative and the destructive aspects. He is a carver and thereby

a creator. When he tries to climb the araba tree with a sacrificial basket on

his head, he is facing the dangers of disintegration. By plucking Oremole

down from the araba tree and by murdering him he has proved himself to be

a prey to the violent destructive aspects in Ogun. To quote Gerald Moore 2

When Demoke leaps to save the Half-child he is attempting a

tragic action in the void that separates one area of existence from

another. As an artist he shares the ambivalent creative energy of

Ogun, an energy which changes the world and which must

inevitably bear the seeds of violence within it. Again when

Demoke attempts to climb the araba tree with a sacrificial basket

on his head, he is dancing the perils of disintegration which assail

all those who venture into the gulf of transition. His fall from the

burning tree and his being snatched up by Ogun may be seen as a

symbolic enactment of death and rebirth or of disintegration and

recreation ( Wole Soyinka 42).

It is appropriate to include Soyinka's own remarks to Peter Enahoro, the

journalist as it has been quoted by Rene Richard. Soyinka is trying to

elucidate the general meaning of A Dance of the Forests. Soyinka told him

that "a play does not have to be understood, that it should be responded

through the pores of the skin and that the playwrights' ambition should be to

propose exciting theatre and if possible to set a riddle which would keep the

audience thinking" (qtd. in Richard 80).

Soyinka has tried to defme the ultimate purpose of drama in his essay,

"Drama and the Idioms of liberation" frst published in 1975:

Also since this is the operative technique, this technique of

interaction, a technique whose end can only be change, not

consolidation (change, however fragmentary, illusory, however

transient, however lacking in concrete, ultimate significance, but

nevertheless change') it suggests that theatre is the most

revolutionary art form known to man (45).

Soyinka believed that the interaction of the audience and the protagonistic

forces on the stage will defmitely lead to positive results and that drama will

succeed in provoking in the audience "a resumed awareness" of the

contemporary situation. The fact is that a certain influence of Bertolt Brecht,

the German playwright, and his concept of the epic theatre can be traced in

the approach of Soyinka towards his works. The figure of Berthold Brecht is

bound to loom large in any consideration of dramatic theory in the twentieth

century. Brecht's theory of the epic theatre and the principle of alienation

influenced many writers and theorists of many different schools. He raised

the fundamental question of what the theatre was for. He believed in the

theory of alienating the audience from the actors on the stage so that their

rational, critical faculties are activated. He believed that this will defimitely

succeed in bringing about the social change he desired. So, instead of

accepting any straight forward, ready-made progressive message, the

spectators are enabled to objectively evaluate the contemporaneous

situations.

By the word 'epic' Brecht signified primarily his attempt to

reproduce on the stage *the objectivity of the narration in Homeric epicT. By

employing a detached narrator and other devices to achieve alienation

effects, Brecht "aimed to encourage his audience to criticize and oppose,

rather than passively to accept the social conditions and modes of behaviour

that the plays represent" (Abrarns 153).

The unique feature of ritual drama is that it encourages a kind of

spectator response. Soyinka had always shown a preference for a round

playing space for his plays. Soyinka believed that in such a space, the

community of spectators will participate more, will have more theatre

response. Distinguishing between the theatre response and audience

participation, it can be said that real audience participation occurs when there

is an emotional spiritual and cognitive relationship between the actors and

the audience. A true participation does not consist in answering back

actively; but "the true activity can not merely be invisible, but also

indivisible" (Abrams 79). As contrasted with the Western plays, ritual drama

"aims to make the processes of participation conscious and therefore

potentially powerful as part of a larger communal project that images

& liberation fi-om cultural oppression* ... Such drama is distinct fi-om

virtually all contemporary Western plays that involve the more colloquial

ritual form of ritualized or repeated events." (Gilbert and Tompkins 66). So,

the plays of Soyinka, though slightly influenced by Brecht, distinctly stand

as unique creations that lead to liberation fi-om cultural oppression.

The plays of Soyinka are remarkable for the convergence of Yoruba

culture and Brechtian convention is evident. Both men share a common

concern with using art to assess and influence the world around them; both

address the social conditions and political events of the world in which they

exist. The structure of the play as well as the handling of the plot clearly

illustrate the influence of Brechts' critical theory where he proposes that the

'illusion of reality of a work should be deliberately shattered by an episodic

plot, by protagonists who do not attract the audience's sympathy, by a

striking theatricality in staging and acting, and by other ways of baring the

artifice of drama so as to produce an alienation effect". (Abrams 150). Like

Brecht, Soyinka too employs theatricality in staging, a loose episodic plot

structure and chooses not a flawless hero but a protagonist who fails to

arouse the sympathy of the audience. By producing this alienation effect,

Soyinka is able to jerk the audience out of their passive roles; He succeeds in

making them critical towards the modern society and encourages an active

involvement with the forces in a society which may lead to a change for the

better. For him, the future is predicated by the present, the present is clarified

by the past. If the present is inadequate, the future will be too.

By staging a play like A Dance Of The Forests with its depiction of

events from the past, the present and the future, Soyinka is able to create an

awareness in the sepectators about an urgent need to act. It is very important

that the leaders as well as his countrymen should take correct decision at the

correct time. By creating protagonists who are not free from follies, Soyinka

has succeeded in activating the thinking potentialities of the spectators and in

leading them to the awareness of urgent action in order to guide their country

to a better future. The play stresses the need of a transition to a more

authentic mode of being. It emphasises the role of each individual in the

postcolonial milieu.

Written and performed for Nigeria's Independence Day celebrations

in 1960 A Dance of the Forests suggests that the infant state, like the half-

child will require an Ogun - inspired act of heroic and perhaps sacrificial

commitment to achieve the communal self awareness. Interpreted broadly, it

can be argued that the cultural function of Soyinka's theatre is to bridge the

gulf of transition and to restore unity and order. Brim Crow's remark in his

I/ article "Empowering the people: African Theatre and Neocolonialism is

worth quoting here": "Its cultural function is the supremely important one of

providing the means through the skill and will of the actor - protagonist to

bridge the gulf of transition for the participant audience and thus to restore to

it an experience of disrupted existential unity and order" (78).

In dramatic performance, the actor is the counterpart of the

protagonist of traditional ritual. The stage is the abyss where transformation

takes place. He is enacting the journey undertaken by Ogun. To quote Brian '-1

Crow ' E ~ p e ~ ~ ~ i y K Q ~ ~ ~ X ,

Soyinka makes no essential distinction between theatrical and

ritual performance, in each, the stage becomes the dangerous place

of transformation in which the performer communicant on behalf

of the vicariously participant audience, takes himself to the limits

of psychic experience, even risking his psychological integrity as

he makes himself the vehicle of contradictions; his body, the cross

roads between the worlds of the living, the ancestors and the

unborn. In this he is enacting, in ritual - aesthetic performance the

primal journey undertaken by the elemental quester Ogun, as he

sought to bridge the gulf of transition between the different

domains of being (77).

He is also enacting the role of the character created by another explorer

disciple of Ogun myth, Again to quote Brian Crow,

And he is also enacting a text created by another Ogun inspired

explorer, the dramatist Soyinka, whose tragic plays culminate in a

ritual action, which offer the hope of a collective transition to a

more authentic mode of being. When Demoke in the climax of A

Dance of the Forests, falls from the totem which he has himself

carved, his action is symbolic of a willed plunge into the

existential abyss which may also be the experience of the

spectators (77.)

The spiritual interdependence between the past, the present and the future in

the community of Yoruba Cosmology, the interdependence between the

three historical actual and prospective planes of entity is also suggested

powerfully through A Dance of the Forests. According to Soyinka, "the true

African sensibility establishes that the past exists in the present, it is co-

existent in present awareness. It clarifies the present and explains the future" rl

("The Writer 19)). Soyinka was not the kind who ignored the past. He was

aware of the validity of the past. That is evident enough from his interest in

African mythology. But he also believed that the past must address the

present and the writer should live in the present and work for the future.

Ogunbeshan gives a very relevant comment about this in his article "Wole

Soyinka, The Past and the Visionary Writer":

Soyinka does not attempt to recreate the past for the purpose of

enshrinement, nor does he stress merely the cultural continuity.

Unlike Achebe who is nostalgic about the past, Soyinka focuses

more directly on the dilemmas of the living to enable him to

anticipate and safe guard the future which he considers the

primary concern of the writer (175).

It will not be inappropriate to point out at this context the aspect of post

colonial cultural politics with which Soyinka is concerned: history and

responsibility. A Dance of the Forests repeatedly emphasizes the privileged

position occupied by the past in the understanding of the present and the

construction of future. He warns his people that past should not be observed

with detachment. For an African, it is difficult to accept a neutral attitude

towards history, to remember it with detachment. Discussing this aspect in A 0 0

Dance @f The Forests, and making a comparison between A Dance 8f The

Forests and Drums and Colours written by Derek Walcott, Tejumola

Olaniyan points out certain this differences between them. Agreeing that

both of them foreground traditional elements like rituals, dances etc. he

remarks:

The general tendency of Drums appears to be toward a

postcoloniality in which history is remembered with little more

than detachment. A Dance, on the other hand, privileges the past

in the understanding of the present and the construction of future.

In A Dance, history serves as exorcism, surgical and violent, and

offers no extenuating apology for the resulting open, gaping

wounds. While A Dance claims, Drums disclaims history and

responsibility for the past (490).

In A Dance 8 f The Forests, the living do provide a continuity with the past.

They can indeed hope to break the sordid pattern of their history through the

awareness they gain. But Soyinka seems to give this warning that the pattern

remains unchanged. To quote Jonathan A. Peters,

Soyinka emphasises the ingrained similarity rather than the

superficial resemblance of the present and future not only in the

totem but also in the double lives of the characters, in the acts of

violence they commit and in the complex symbo

Abiku child during the rites of welcome (170).

Rola is adept at driving men to madness and self-destructi

filled with her lovers" (22). She is responsible for the deaths of two men in

the present life. In her previous life she was the notorious,Madarne Tortoise

who had led many lives including that of the noble warrior to destruction.

Similarly Adenebi the councillor is, in essence, a bestial character, an

incarnation of all deadly sins like hypocrisy, corruption, authenticity and

misplaced values. He has grown "rosy cheeks by bribe and blood (Olaniyan

497). Demoke, the carver, is the most sensitive of the three. He represents

the creative spark for the gathering. In his previous life too he was an artist, a

bard, a professional aestheticizer of tyranny in the despotic court of Mata

Kharibu. He has scarified in his present life, the life of his apprentice,

Oremole. But he later confesses his guilt in a long speech. Demoke~

symbolizes the role an artist has to play in society. An artist, though guilty of

his venial crime, can defmitely assist his people in learning from his

mistakes and then in opening a pathway towards salvation.

An account of the lives of the three figures, Demoke, Rola and

Adenebi runs parallel to the account of the lives of poet, Madame Tortoise

and court historian as represented in the kingdom of Mata Kharibu who ruled

eight centuries ago. By suggesting that the past was equally inglorious as the

present, Soyinka is emphasizing the universal cycle of human violence. The

view point upheld by Adenebi and the old man that the past is known for

accumulated cultural heritage and that it has only illustrious ancestors creates

a feeling of nostalgia. It is an Edenic past that symbolizes all that is noble in

past history. But in actual life, Soyinka suggests, "their assemblage of

illustrious people is always equalled by a corresponding gallery of infamous

rogues and villains" (Peters 177).

It becomes obvious that even before Soyinka became famous for his

tiger - tigritude quip he had expressed in A Dance Of The Forests his anger

at the preoccupation of his people with past greatness. It is through the

agency of Mata Kharibds' court that Soyinka seeks to demonstrate the

inglorious side of the African heritage. We learn that the Dead Man was a

warrior who refused to lead men to a war he considered unjust. He has got

the courage to tell the physician of the court that the war Kharibu orders him

to fight is an unjust war only to recover the trousseau of a stolen wife. His

courageous streak becomes must obvious in another conversation with the

physician. "Unborn generations will be cannibals, most worshipful

physician. Unborn generations will as we have done, eat up one another"

(49).

Shocked at this independent nature of the warrior, Kharibu can only 1 )

refer to it as "thought - cancer for which neither he nor the court historian

can find any precedence. The court historian remarks: "It is unheard of. War

is the only consistency that past ages afford us. It is the legacy which new

nations seek to perpetuate. Patriots are grateful for wars. Soldiers have never

questioned bloodshed. The cause is always the accident, your majesty, and

war is the Destiny. This Man is a traitor" (57). The warrior's wife, Dead

woman, died of the shock of the punishment inflicted upon her husband:

castration and slavery. This is the glorious past which the humans intend to

celebrate Jonatham Peters remarks thus: "Kharibu' S unconscionable

indulgence in a futile war lays bare another ignoble aspect of the African

past and calls in question the exclusive glorification of the traditional African

heritage and cult~u-e" (179). It also suggests that in the contemporary scene

also there is much scope for meaningless wars. "A Dunce thus is famous for v

its exorcism of what the author sees as the 'boring romanticism of the Negro'

(Soyinka "The Future" 14). It is unsparing in its condemnation of the present

too.

Wole Soyinka knew that the present age is also beset by corrupt

statesmen and unjust men of justice. Confronted with the impotence of the

elite, the corruption of leaders and men of justice, Soyinka did not know

where to turn. He preached that lessons should be learned from the past and

should be used for the construction of the future.

What Soyinka implies is that Nigeria, in the newly gained

independent state, should never deny the past and that each Nigerian should

make an inquiry into his role in the postcolonial milieu. To quote Tejumola

Olaniyan, "for Soyinka, in this play, the moment of independence is time not

for denying, or even simply a f f e g history. Instead, as part of productive

a f fmt ion , it is time for a no-holds-barred inquiring of the post colonial's

own role in the historical trajectory that culminate in that festive occasion"

(489).

From what has been analysed in the foregoing pages, it becomes clear

that in creating A Dunce Of The Forests, the political situation of 1960 has

played an important role. The present - the gaining of independence -

provides an admirable vantage point from which history can be reviewed and

reinterpreted. The motivation for such reinterpretation arises out of the need

to understand the present itself, situated as it is in the context of history. This

is one of the concerns among many others of what is currently known as

"post-colonial discourses" Frantz Fanon through work, The Wretched of the

Earth has argued that anticolonial movements would fail unless they

addressed the issue of the survival after decolinisation. Critically, from both 0

these points of view, the play A Dance Of The Forests does deserve to be

listed among the postcolonial New Literatures of the day. It is a key

document in the development of the European as well as African awareness

of the condition of the colonised as decolonisation proceeded.

A Dance Of The Forests with its chastising of the past, and the

exposition of the lust for power excellently proves that Soyinka does not

have a blind veneration of the past. He has exposed the hypocrisy of the

rulers of the past; he has criticized the new rulers as they ignore the urgent

problems of the present on which "the poets have lately taken to gun running

and writers are heard of holding up radio stations."A writer has to gain

authenticity through an activism concentrating on the present. Only then he

becomes relevant. An African writer has been irrelevant as long as "he was

content to turn his eye backwards in time and prospect in archaic fields for e

forgotten gems which would dazzle and distract the present" (Fmser 563).

The writer becomes relevant when he truthfully depicts the present realities

and creates a kind of self-awareness in the minds of his people. Soyinka

never had a blind nostalgic attitude towards the past. Neither did he think

that gaining independence would immediately make the nation free of all

exploitative tendencies as shown by the colonizers. He warns his countrymen 0

of the problems which the country has to face. A Dance @f The Forests,

gives a warning to the Africans that the country has to be ready to face

problems like hypocrisy, corruption and betrayal from their new rulers too.

It can never be assumed that colonialism ceases to exist when a

colony formally achieves its independence. The hoisting of a newly

independent colony's flag is indeed a crucial moment for the newly

independent nation as a symbolic gesture. It is more important to realize that

colonial values do not disappear all on a sudden. Overturning colonialism,

then, is not just about handing land back to its dispossessed peoples, or

returning power to those who were once ruled by the empire. There is a

reversal in the hierarchical order. An attempt is made to represent reality in

ways which do not replicate colonial values. As John Mcleod puts it: "if

colonialism involves colonising the mind, then resistance to it requires

decolonising the mind" (22). There must be a chahge in the mindset; a desire

and a power to challenge the dominant ways of seeing. John Mcleod further

remarks: "Indeed in order to challenge the colonial order of things, some of

us may need to reexamine our received assumption of what we have been

taught as natural or true" (23). Wole Soyinka warns his people through A

Dance af The Forests about internal colonisation. They are given a chance

through Demoke, Rola and Adenebi and through their past incarnations to

know that what they have been taught as glorious or true are just the

opposite.

Edward Said has pointed out in Culture and Imperialism that an

attempt to read a text in its colonial context bears witness to "worldliness of

cultureW(78). Explaining what Said meant by this, John Macleod remarks in

Beginning Post Colonialism that this term reminds us that "literary texts

emerge from and have complex engagements with the historical, political

and social conditions of their time amongst which colonialism is

fundamental in the nineteenth century." (28). This way of approach

encourages "contrapuntal readings of literary texts - that which takes

account of both processes-that of imperialism and that of resistance" (Said,

Culture 79).

In A Dance Of The Forests, what Soyinka does is to adequately

represent a postcolonial society in search of national identity. At the f ~ s t

stage is portrayed "the initial burst of heightened optimism" which the whole

nation experiences, now that the British have officially left. But towards the

end, this optimism has been completely inverted and has been changed into

severe pessimism.

One of the reasons for the failure of the new nation to develop freely

into a stable and developed one may be that national resistance to

imperialism itself derives its notion of nation from the Western culture it is

resisting. As the well renowned colonial theorist, Gayathri Spivak points out,

as the product of imperialism, nationalism succeeds only in changing "the

geo-political conjucture from territorial imperialism to neo-colonialism" ("In

Other Woas", 245). She is aware of the fact that the national governments

may, in resisting the imperialist governments, follow the same pattern of

socio-political hierarchy which was popularised by colonialist philosophy.

It matters more what the African governments now do than

what the colonial governments did. It matters less who the colonizer was

than how deep a modernizing impact the colonisers made on the African

society. It is important that the new independent nation frees itself from the

impact of colonization. It is here that the significance of the myths comes in.

As C. Vijayasree remarks: "The myths do refer to a society's traditional

ability to live with cultural diversities. The myths can be used to build

psychological and even metaphysical defence against cultural erosion." (39).

Soyinka has made clear in Myth, Literature and African World the

significant role of the myths in shaping the future of a nation. Colonialism

definitely causes psychological and cultural distortions. So, as a starting

point of the revolutionary processes, in a postcolonial Afiican society, there

must be "a reinstatement of the values authentic to that society, modified

only by the demands of a contemporary world." (Myth X).

It can be seen that when traditional performance elements are

incorporated into a contemporary play, they affect the play's content,

structure and style, and subsequently its overall meaning or effect. As Helen

Gilbert puts it, "the folkloric background is represented, reflected on, given a

cultural thrust; (and so) raised to the level of consciousness, it emerges as a

new form of self critical culture." (Gilbert and Tompkins 86). This faculty

for self-evaluation, and the self-reflective criticism, is one of the prominent

traits of postcolonial literature.

Similarly, in the works of African writers too is seen the tendency to

employ the native traditions, myths and ritualistic devices. They may be

combined with other cultural forms as is seen in Soyinka. He interweaves

elements of Western drama with Yoruba ritual. Ritual is given a 0

contemporary relevance too. A Dance &f The Forests stands as a concrete

example of the fusing of Western techniques and Yoruba rites, rituals and

dances. But it can be proved that the play's deepest inspiration is defiantly

and deliberately African because Soyinka knew well that to decolonize

thoroughly meant that the indigenous be forcibly substituted for the alien, in

literature as in life. As Ellesk Boehmer argues,

Using conceptual structures drawn from local tradition the writers

like Soyinka or Christopher Okigbo tried to integrate the cultural

life of the past with their postindependence Westernized reality.

Writers came to recognise that the gods, dreams, half-children,

warriors, and strange beasts of local legend and oral epic still held

explanatory power, despite the efforts of missions and schools to

eradicate them. Figures from myth could not simply be dismissed

as outworn fetishes or heathen embarrassments. They offered a

rich resource for cultures seeking redefinition of self (104).

So, we can say that Soyinka has redefined tradition as resistance here.

The critical evaluation of the new African-English literatures that

have emerged as a part of post -war cultural developments, makes it clear

that they share similar styles and approaches, have dealt with the same basic

themes, and gone through much the same phases of development. The most

traumatic event in the life of the African people was the European aggression

and occupation of Africa. The long years of shame and humiliation under

foreign rule, the long strenuous struggle for liberation, experiments of

dictatorial governments with self rule after the attainment of independence

constitute the three phases of recent African history. These phases of

development are important from a postcolonial perspective. As is pointed out

by Gilbert Phelps, "These writers move through different phases from initial

revulsion against colonialism and passionate reassertion of indigenous

cultural values, through disillusionment with the fruits of independence, and

thereafter either to a growing sense of alienation, or to silence, or to fhther 8 :

explosion of anger and radicalism" 442). Writers like Achebe or Soyinka

illustrate through their works these different stages. To quote Gilbert Phelps

again, "Between Achebe and Soyinka they illustrate the whole course of the

new literatures, of English-speaking Africa and indeed in many respects

those of other parts of the world which have also emerged fi-om the colonial

experiences" (8:342). Soyinka7s works do reflect the changes undergone by

him as he passed through these different phases. If The Lion and The Jewel

represents the stage where the works reflect 'the revulsion against

colonialism and a reassertion of indigenous cultural values,' A Dance Of The

Forests represents the second phase which expresses the awareness of the

disillusioning experiences of independence and the need to go back to one's

cultural roots. Madmen and Specialists, The Season of Anomy and the other

later works of Soyinka stand for the third phase where the author, having

grown bitter after the attitude of the new nation builders becomes more

pessimistic. Soyinka's works, as the works of the other African writers, are a

reflection of his awareness of the horrifying and destroying colonial

experience and its aftermath. They are also a clear reflection of the

awareness of the author about the efforts made by the African writers to seek

his roots in the pre-colonial past. After a close reading of his works, this fact ke

becomes obvious) He was totally against judging African world and its

literature using Western theories. He knew that they were derived from the

apprehension of Western theories. He knew that they were derived from the

apprehension of Western history, their social neuroses and their value

systems. He emphatically insisted upon the need to apprehend a culture

whose reference points lie within the culture itself.

0 It can be strongly argued that A Dance bf The Forests is a work

which very clearly reflects the basic themes and the same phases of

development as any other work of the postcolonial literatures. It clearly

depicts the euphoria of gaining independence from the British rulers along

with expressing revulsion against colonialism. It consists of a passionate

reassertion of indigenous cultural values. It is a truthful revelation of the

disillusionment that awaits the new rulers and the jubilant people who are

drunk with excitement. It is also a grim warning of the gruesome future

which will definitely threaten people with its sense of alienation and

estrangement. It warns them of being drawn to an age of disillusionment,

silence or further explosion of anger and radicalism.

Soyinka warned his country men that gaining of independence should

not prevent them from realizing the reality of the situation. It is a moment

charged with the rhetoric of independence and ecstasy of self-discovery. But

they should not focget that they have got a tremendous responsibility of

rising up to the expectations of the people. At a time "when an age ends and

when the soul of a nation long suppressed fmds utterance7'(Memmi 87) too

much expectation of a new world magically emerging from the physical

ruins of colonialism will only lead to disillusionment. It is impossible either

for the new man or the new world to emerge all on a sudden. To quote Albert

Memmi," And the day oppression ceases, the new man is supposted to

emerge before our eyes immediately. Now I do not like to say so but I must, catp

since d e d i z a t i o n has demonstrated it. This is not the way it happens. The

colonized lives for a long time before we see that really new man" (88).

Soyinka gives the same message to his country men through the play. His C)

pessimism whether political or personal this explains the postcoloniality as

"a historical condition marked by the visible apparatus of freedom and

concealed persistence of unfreedom" (Sharma 26). 0

A Dance of The Forests is remarkable for the amazing way in which

Soyinka has used the theatre to explore and a f f m his cultural substance.

What strikes one is the radical originality of his approach to liberating black

Africa from its crippling legacy of European imperialism. As Brian Crow

puts it:

He envisioned a New M i c a that would escape its colonial past by

grafting the technical advances of the present on to the stock of its

own ancient traditions. Native myth, reformulated to

accommodate contemporary reality, was to be the foundation of

the future, opening the way to 'self-retrieval, cultural recollection,

[and] cultural security' (Myth 80).

Many critics have blamed Soyinka for the density and complexity of his

plays. They accuse him of being eurocentric and of writing his plays mainly

for European audience. He is severely criticized for the complexity arising

out of the use of English and for employing Western techniques in his plays.

Even though he has advocated the use of 'Swahili' tongue, he has shown his

expertise in the handing of the appropriated language of the center. Without

overlooking the far reaching effects of the colonial influence it must be

observed that many natives had developed a kind of veneration and

appreciation for 'English' and the English way of life. Helen Tiffm writes in

Post-colonial Literatures and Counter Discourses that 'once colonial

calibans transported the language or had it imposed, they used it to curse and

to subvert" (19). But the English educated group "who spoke the master's

language did not curse like Caliban but praised Prospero for extending

Europe into Asia" (Sharp, Allegories 58). But the praise suggests an

ambivalence too. It is true that writing in the language of the colonizer

revealed a hidden appreciation and admiration for England and the British

rule. Its culture was both alien and more desirable to the natives than their

own. Eventhough they considered their mastery over the language of their

masters as a valuable achievement it can be considered as a gesture of

resistance too. They thought that by getting an easy access to the culture and

language of the Europeans they could make a claim of equality too with the

Britishers. The colonizers also will value this claim for equality because the

natives were writing in their language. But the advantage of the natives was

that they could represent truly African situations, experiences and emotions

through their writings. In this way it can be considered as a gesture of

resistance. So, Wole Soyinka's texts are potentially subversive even when he

employs the language, vocabulary, forms and norms of English. As Ellek

Boehmer says, "Take-over or appropriation was in its way a bold refusal of

cultural dependency" (205). Soyinka remains unique in that he has absorbed

"the coloniser's language, literature and culture into the larger and already

eclectic tradition of learning and borrowing, tolerance for other cultures, and

veneration for learning and books" (Sharma 78).

The remarks made by Brian Crow, once again, are appropriate:

From this perspective, the critics of A Dance Of The Forests

appear unwitting neocolonialists, their ideas mere replays in

Afi-ican costume of the Wests' own indigenous myths of

liberalism, Marxism and regressive racism. Soyinka dreamed

instead of a truly decolonized continent, where an autonomous

Mican culture assimilated only those progressive elements of

recent history that were consistent with its own authentic identity. @a-)

Without rejecting the West completely Soyinka combined the best of his

own culture with some of the techniques of the West. To quote Meenakshi

Sharma, "Such appropriation and absorption by grafting upon native

traditions is another way of refusal of cultural dependency" (78).

The play dealt with black Mica ' s "recurrent cycle of stupidities"

thematically. The intention of the playwright was to remind the nation of the

chronic dishonesty and abuse of power which colonialism had bred in the

new generation of political leaders. Stylistically, the play, A Dance of the

Forests is a fusion of Yoruba festival tradition with European modernism.

These two aspects were sufficient enough to invite severe criticism fiom all

quarters. Soyinka's suggestion that there is widespread corruption angered

Nigerian authorities. Leftists complained about the play's elitist aesthetics

and Afi-ican chauvinists objected to Soyinka's adaptation of Western

techniques. Thus Soyinka had to face severe criticism fi-om both the newly

installed leaders of Nigeria as well as his fellow intellectuals.

But Soyinka's critics failed to understand and appreciate the

originality in his approach to liberate Afiica fiom the influence of European

imperialism. He envisioned a "New Mica" that would escape fiom the

aftermath of colonialism by combining the technical advances of the present

into the stock of its own traditions. He gave this message to his countrymen

that only native myth can lay the foundation of the future leading to "self- &h4

retrieval, cultural recollection & cultural security." Ofcourse, native myth

can be reformulated to accommodate contemporary reality. Through the

play, Soyinka projects his dream of a truly decolonized Afi-ica where a

perfect blending of African culture with those progressive elements of recent

history that were consistent with its own authentic identity has taken place.

By revisiting, remembering and critically interrogating the colonial past

through the play, Soyinka has projected this idea that a truly decolonized

Africa can be created by a blending of African culture with those progressive

elements of recent history.

In showing the relationship between the past and the present, Soyinka

makes use of several major symbols like bridges, domes, circles and the

rainbows. A predominant role is played by festivals too. The Strong Breed

centers upon the festival of the New Year. In A Dance of the Forests, the

central action is the gathering of the tribes. In The Road, the kernel is an

event that happened at the last annual Driver's festival. Kongi's Harvest is

centered around the festival of New Yam. All these plays illustrate the

various devices employed by Soyinka to create an emotionally charged

atmosphere that helps the spectators to feel to come near God. The principal

external features of the festivals are drumming, singing, dancing, feasting

and sacrifice. Poetic songs and prayers are sung. Dances are performed,

sacrifices are offered and pent up spirits are released. Through these devices

he intends to make the effect extremely exciting and very lasting. Robert

Mac Dowel explains Soyinka's stage devices and their effect upon the

audience most appropriately:

Soyinka makes uses of fascinating devices in his own

expressionistic plays: dancing, singing, miming, speeches in verse,

flashbacks and characters from the spirit world. He employs

techniques familiar at Nigerian festivals and utilizes any poetic

methods which enforces the emotional and intellectual impact of

his dramas; in short he has no slavish attachment to the merely

naturalistic level of presentation (35).

Yoruba festivals play a prominent role in Soyinka's plays. The plays like A

Dance of the Forests, Kongi's Harvest, and The Strong Breed have an

overall design of a festival. It is typical of a festival that it causes excitement.

Celebration as well as tension prevail everywhere. This tension in the

atmosphere is increased by such devices like drumming and music. Oyin

Ogunba observes,

In each of these plays the prevailing mood is that of the

preparation for a celebration of a good event which produces so

much excitement or tension in the whole populace that everybody

thinks of nothing but the great event. This is the atmosphere that

prevails when important ceremonies are performed in traditional

Africa and Soyinka in these plays very often catches the essence

of the festival mood with the drumming, bustle and other

manifestations of a holiday (8).

Obviously it is relevant to consider the Bakthinian concept of the carnival

here. Bakthin is undisputedly a great theoretician of the literature of the

twentieth century. In spite of the fact that the impact of Bakthin on literary

theory began to be felt only in his later years, he has become highly

influential. His influence has extended beyond literary theory and into the

general study of texts in nearly every area of humanities. Even though the

theory proposed by Bakthin is applied generally for the interpretation of

novels, some of his concepts regarding carnivals can be used for explaining

the significance of the festivals in Soyinka's plays. In addition to

polyglossia, Bakthin mentions a second element of decisive importance to

the rise of novel : laughter. Carnival is the ancient and medieval festival.

Here laughter is elicited and celebrated. Anachronism, the past dialogically

rendered as contemporaneous with the present, is the essence of carnival

activity and of the drama it inspires. There is a collapse of space and time in

the carnivalised event or its literary rendering and the result is, of course,

laughter. People do not merely see carnival as a sight to be seen, but they

live in it. The two principal weapons used in this onslaught were "the reverse

of hierarchy, which is humbling, debunking or debasing of whatever is lofty

or lowly and the lowering of all forms of expression in language, art" (Clark

and Holquist 309). Bakthin's concept of the carnivalesque has its origin in

actual carnival. The medieval carnival represented second life for the

common people. Its political significance lies in this that it upturned the

orthodox hierarchy and positions. Again to quote Katherine Clark, "The

suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of

particular significance. All were considered equal during carnival. The

Utopian ideal and the realistic merged in the carnival experience, unique of

its k i n d (3 1 0).

Thus, during carnival time, there was a temporary suspension of

hierarchical rank. So a special type of communication was possible during

carnivalization which was impossible in everyday life. Carnival laughter

which is directed at all and every one "is affirming and denying and burying

and reviving. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives. Such is the laughter

of the carnival" (Morris 200). Lacking all the characteristics of official feast

like assertion of all that was stable and perennial and the emphasis on the

existing hierarchy, the carnival encouraged a free mingling and frank speech.

To quote Pam Morris, "Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of

becoming, change and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized

and completed. The familiar communication of the people in carnival time

lacks the essentials, the all-human character, the festivity, utopian meaning,

philosophical depth" (1 99).

A similar pattern can be perceived in Soyinka7s idea of a festival.

Again and again we find Soyinka reminding his people not to bask in unreal

glories or rejoice complacently. It produces an awareness in the people, a

need to see themselves as they are and had always been. As the publication

of the play coincided with the celebration of the Nigerian Independence, it

was a moment of death for the colonizers and a moment of birth and revival

for the colonized. The festive laughter is gay and triumphant. It is at the

same time mocking and deriding and is directed at the rulers and the ruled.

There is a view that A Dance of the Forests does not project very clearly the

traditional festival model as his other plays like Kongis' Harvest and The

Strong Breed do. But the ideas of the welcoming of the Dead, the illustrious

ancestors, and the gathering of the Tribes suggest a Yoruba Egungun

festival. It is the celebration of a good event, independence, and it produces

great excitement to the whole nation. But here again, as in Kongi's Harvest,

the underlying hint is that there is nothing to rejoice about. The joyous

atmosphere is only superficial. The past has been one of opportunism and the

future is also going to be bleak with suffering and death. So the festival is

averted and A Dance of the Forests which had begun as a celebration of a

joyous occasion and a gathering of the tribes rapidly becomes a dance of

death.

Bakthin's concept of carnival as a celebration of the disorder is thus

well applicable to A Dance Of The Forests where we see assertion, denial

burial and revival. Similarly we find a suspension of all hierarchical rank and

privileges and a free mingling and free mixing and frank interaction between

people of different ranks and order. The Orthodox hierarchy is suspended

and upturned in the community of Yoruba cosmology in which are coeval

the three historical, actual and prospective planes of entity. There is the free

coexistence of the supernatural, the human beings, the dead ones and even

the unborn. We find the human beings intervening in the actions of the gods

as Demoke does with Eshuoro or the Gods interfering with human affairs. It

is only in such a carnival, a dance of the forests, where a temporary

suspension of both real and the ideal hierarchical rank is created that a

special communication is possible. To quote Helen Gilbert and Joanne

Tompkins, "Carnival is thus suitable as a model for pos t~o lon ia l

representations of the body politic that seek to dismantle the hierarchised

corpus of imperial culture" (80).

Bakthin has theorised that carnival is a medium of the multivoiced or

polyphonic spirit which very effectively opposes monologic orders such as

colonialism. Viewing critically, ~ostcolonialism, which recognises both the

coloniser and the colonised enables polyphonic dialogue. When applied to

postcolonial contexts, carnival perspectives undermine "the self-determining

(im) postures of imperialism." Heterogeneity sets carnival apart. So, Joan

Tompkins argues that, the idea of carnival as a subversion of all categories of

social privilege is more acceptable. "In this respect, more than the

conservative view of carnival as a licensed inversion, the ideas of carnival as

a subversion that undermines virtually all categories of social privilege is 1)

more enabling and thus prevents their unproblematic reassemblage (Gilbert

and Tompkins 84)

Again, by removing all sorts of social ranks fi-om a celebration,

carnival seems to depict the polite people of a society as a rebelling group

that threatens to loosen the grip of the authority and move (2t towards equality

and uniformity. So in other terms, "the carnival constantly reconstructs the

docile (colonised) body as an unruly (resisting) body that threaten to loosen

institutionalised authority's grasp on representation." (Gilbert and Tompkins

86).

From these interpretations it can be argued that carnival forms

strengthen the docile black community whereas it undermines the imperial

authority. Carnivals are highly appreciated in the new literatures because

they have got a historical suitability as an influential form for postcolonial

drama. In addition, carnivals provide a suitable media for asserting the

cultural value of a particular tribe because the playwrights do not have to

seek means of having access to the costly theartre technology upon which

many Western conventions rely. Thus a return to the rituals and myths and

carnivals has great contemporary relevnce. It is appropriate to bring in here

the words of Gibbon as they are quoted by Gilbert and Tompkins: "In this

respect, the representation of ritual and carnival through drama establishes

the umbilical link between art and tradition that is necessary for oln4

decolonisation" (Gilbert, Tompkins 80).

9;

A Dance Qf The Forests is remarkable for the use of the devices like

masks, dances, songs, drums, rituals, etc. Like rituals which are considered

highly sacred, its associated costumes, masks and other paraphernalia are

also regarded as sacred. Rituals, masks and other costumes signify many

unspoken but evident suggestions and are therefore considered as a powerful

tool for postcolonial culture. Masks serve many purposes as a body covering

and more importantly as signifying many meanings which are of course

specific to the context and culture in which they are used. Masks are used to

create archetypes and to help establish ancestral links. Masks are not used in

a drama just for aesthetic purposes. It has got considerable spiritual power

for the wearer. A mask may conceal the real identity of the wearer. But it

reveals many significant meanings like the site of culture, its power and

importance outside the context of the play. The use of ritualized mask is

highly crucial in the postcolonial context because its usage in Afiican texts

signifies a move away fiom the coloniser and a return to the roots. Perhaps

this has been very aptly explained in Postcolonial Theory.

While a mask conceals the face of the actor, it also reveals the site

of culture, and the significance and power invested in the mask

outside the context of the play. In contemporary Afiican texts, the

use of a ritualised mask generally signifies a shift away fiom

imperial expectations and a return to traditional values, and an

overturning of colonising Western influences. It also asserts the

continuation of traditional or indigenous ritualised religious

practices despite the influence of Christian missionaries (Gilbert

and Tompkins 63).

A study of A Dance of the Forests presents Soyinka's concept of the

privileged position of the artist who is the most creative and sensitive

individual within the human community. It is through Demoke that Soyinka

provides a moral and symbolic focus for numerous interactions between

events past and present and between the characters, human and supernatural. in

Abiola Irele rernarks,"Traditions and the Yomba writer, D.O. Fagunwa,

Amios Tutuola and Wole Soyinka", "The myth of artist as it developed in

Soyinka's writings rests on an idea of his role as the mediator of the inner

truths that sustain the collective life, and on his function in renewing the

fundamental values that govern it." (63).

Ngugi Wa Thiong'O in his Homecoming fmds fault with Soyinka the

artist for drawing a static picture of the society. As an artist, he should "try to

go beyond this, to seek out the sources, the causes and the trends of a

revolutionary struggle which have already destroyed the traditional power

map drawn up by the colonialist nations" (Thiong'O 66). As the exploited

majority all over the world tries to attain freedom, the artist being one among

the exploited colonized people 'should give moral direction and vision to a

struggle which is continuous in changing the face of 2oth century (Thiong'O

66).

Soyinka has envisioned a role for the artist which is of dynamic force.

Soyinka believed that the artist lives in a society which is subjected to

internal changes. The duty of the artist is to direct this change. The society is

to be saved by means of dedication and far-sighted actions of certain

individuals. Such individuals may have to risk their own life and may be

victimised. But the society may benefit from their vision. So he "sees society

as being in continual need for salvation from itself. This act of salvation is

not a mass act, it comes about through the vision and dedication of

individuals who doggedly pursue their vision in spite of the opposition of the

very society they seek to save. They frequently end up as the victims of the

society which benefits from their vision." (Ogungbesan, "Wole Soyinka and

the Novelists' Responsibility" 6)

Parallels between Fanon's paradigm about the African intellectuals

and Soyinka's treatment of them are unmistakable. Soyinka and his

intellectual heroes seem to correspond to Fanon's formulations about African

intellectuals. Clearly Fanon entrusts the responsibility of analyzing and

leading the society upon the intellectuals, especially the writers. Similarly

Soyinka has depicted the intellectual of his two complex novels. The

Interpreters and The Season of Anomy and the artists like Demoke as being

bestowed with the power of leading the people of their society. They wake

up in order to revitalize society. Kola Wole Ogungbesan observes.

Soyinka as a writer deserves to be taken seriously because of his

high intellectual position among African writers. A speculative

thinker, his persistent call to African writers to demonstrate that

they have a vision shows that he sees the literary artist as a

redeemer. He believes that the writer possesses an innerlight

unavailable to the mass of people, and that it is his duty to guide

his society towards a beautiful future (7-8).

In a traditional African society an artist employs a variety of forms. He

stands for a musician, dancer, singer, sculptor, spokesman, critic and

conscience of the community. Soyinka's argument is that the modern

African writer should possess all these qualities. He should be versatile and

at the same time critical. The artist should provide an insight into the nature

and existence of the world. Thus the artist is entrusted with a great

responsibility. Soyinka's emphasis on the writer's personal responsibility

very importantly includes within it the sense of social responsibility.

The writer has to remain true to what he believes in. Only then can he

function as the conscience of his society. But this independence of spirit was

not encouraged by rulers neither of the past nor of the present. For the

despotic rulers, the possession of a questioning mind was like an abominable

feature as malignant and killing as "thought-cancer". Soyinka has

meaningfully drawn the picture of the empire of Matakharibu, as the shrine

of historic magnificence Such a glorious empire has a whore as a queen and

a tyrant as a king. This tyrant fears independent minds and is eager to destroy

intellectual powers. He has no principles. Soyinka is now the true artist who

with courage raises a questioning eyebrow at the romanticized concept that

people have of the past and thereby of the future of their country. So at one

level, "the play is a debunking of the nationalistic fervors of the times, with

its romanticizing of what the Council Orator refers to as "the accumulated

heritage ... Mali, Chaki, Songhai, Glory, Empires7, where as the flashback

shows Mata Kharibu, one of the most 'glorious' of the emperors, as a blood

- thirsty tyrant who kills his sevants or sells them to slave traders, and wages

unjust wars." (Phelps 8:340).

A section of the dialogue between Mata Kharibu and the sooth sayer

is quite expository in its nature.

MATA KHARIBU. I could understand if he aimed at my throne.

But he is not even man for that. What does it mean? What do

you see for me in the future? Will there be more like him

born with this thought cancer in their heart.

SOOTH SAYER. Mata Kharibu, have you ever seen a smudge

on the face of the noon?

MATAKHARIBU. What do you mean?

SOOTH SAYER. And yet it happens. Once in every million

years, one of the sheep that trail the moon in its wanderings

does dare to wipe its smutty nose on the moon. Once in a

million years. But the moon is still and who remembers the

envy-ridden sheep.

MATA KHARIBU. So the future holds nothing for men like

him?

SOOTH SAYER. Nothing : Nothing at all.

Another purpose behind this reenactment of the glorious palace scene of

Mata Kharibu is to emphasize the cyclic pattern of human violence. The

present is portrayed in no better a way. Various corruptions are exposed. The

Dead man and Dead woman are linked in violence to both the ancient

courtiers of Mata Kharibu and their incarnations of the present generation.

The Half-child laments that once again it will be born dead as in the past.

The modern idealists and intellectuals alike are found wanting in principles.

The cycle of violence is projected from the past through the present to the

future. What is suggested is that the history presents an inevitable cycle of

evil. The problems of selfishness and corruption are the universal and

recurrent features of human nature. The view that is projected is that "the

cyclic movement of history churns up very much the same manifestation of

evil down the ages" (David 62).

Wole Soyinka seems to be satirising the past which has a powerful

influence on the present life. The misuse of power which entails other vices

like exploitation, flippancy, lying, cheating, inhumanity and betrayal is

exposed and satirised. through the depiction of the proceedings of the court

of Mata Kharibu. Highhanded legalisation of illegality, shameless

opportunitism and selfishness are satirised here. History shows a repetition

of absurd follies. Mankind is imprisoned within a cycle of absurd and blind

passions.

Eldred Jones in his The Writing of Wole Soyinka has graphically

explained that "for Soyinka, history is a nearly cyclical movement, any

progress being represented by a kink after an evolution and at the start of a

new cycle" (33). What is needed to break the cycle and make independence a

positive reality is heroic action of a kind beyond conventional notions of

good and evil. The spirit of darkness foresees that those who expect too

much of independence will be misled. Forest Head declares that nothing is

ever altered. Only Demoke the artist, murderer, and follower of Ogun, can be

said to have learned anything - that he must accept his destructive as well as

his creative instincts. And his offering to the celebrations is the totem pole

which soars upwards. This pole, symbolic of the passage which Ogun had

once made between the gods and man, is the only one creation which has any

validity.

Like the God Ogun, Demoke is a combination of creativity and

destruction. The implied suggestion is that man is mean and noble, evil and

good at the same time. Demoke has been archetypally linked with Ogun. He

is endowed with the same creative energy and destructive power as his

patron God Ogun. The arguments is that this contradictory nature in Demoke

transforms him into a new artist and provides him with a new insight into

things. To quote Abiola Irele,

There is the suggestion that the contradictions of his existence

resolve themselves finally into a new insight into his own

individual nature and that of his fellow men, a development which

transforms him into a true artist, into the live center of the

communal consciousness. Art in its deepest sense implies not only

a surge of the senses, but also an introspective process (63).

It is relevant to remember that the themes discussed in the works of many

works belonging to postcolonial literatures include as a prominent one "the

functions of art and artists in a subordinated society" (Crow and Bansfield

19). Wole Soyinka's major works celebrate the role of intellectuals or artists

as leading the people to self-apprehension. The intellectuals are seen, a

described in the introduction and Death and the King's Horseman, as

undergoing three phases in his role of analysing and leading his society.

These are in keeping with Fanon's concept of the intellectual as is analysed

in The Wretched of the Earth. The fnst phase is a period when the

intellectual assimilates the culture of the ruling power. After this feeling of

estrangement from the native culture, the next phase awakens in him an

awareness about the new reality, about the greatness of his culture. The third

phase is the fighting phase when the intellectual accepts the role of the

awakener. Demoke, like the other artists, undergoes these three stages and

finally succeeds in guiding the tribe through the proper way.

Soyinka's vision philosophically ranges far beyond the present. In the

frame of his reference is the pasts, the present and the ongoing stream of

human existence At a time when a nation celebrates its independence, the

natural reaction is to recall the heroic deeds of the past that will inspire the

future generations. But what Soyinka quite unexpectedly does here is to hint

that

lurking below all its surface, pomp and majesty are disturbing

traits, bestial and violent-of human nature, the whoring of Mata

Kharibu's queen, the corruption of his Historian, the selling of the

soldier and his sixty men and slaves, the machinations of Madame

Tortoise against her new lord and the total lack of feeling and

compassion by men of power who engulf their subjects and lesser

compatriots in meaningless wars" (Peters 179).

Dead man as a warrior in his previous life in the court of Mata Kharibu

predicts about the cannibalistic nature of human beings 'Cannibalism' has

become an important metaphor in postcolonial literatures for demonstrating

the process by which imperial Europe distinguishes itself fiom and the

colonized subjects and provides a justification for that expansion.

Cannibalism which has different connotations is present in all aspect

of life. Cannibalism is present in the innate wicked nature of human beings;

it is present in exploitation, war, betrayal and murder. It is there in "the

brother eating - brother" morality in a wicked society. Soyinka has

repeatedly emphasized his conviction that human beings are simply

cannibals.

In modern age this cannibalistic streakbs reached its extreme stage

where nations fight among one other for the flimsiest of reasons. In A Dance

Of The Forests itself there is the example of the historian who insists that

war is necessary to reclaim the queen's wardrobe from her former husband.

He says about the history of Troy: "And who was the inspiration of this

divine carnage? Helen of Troy, a woman whose honour because is as rare a

conception as her beauty. Would Troy, if it were standing today, lay claim

to preservation in the annals of history if a thousand had not been

slaughtered behind its gates and a hundred thousand Trojans within her

walls" (5 1).

In an interview with Lewis Nkosi, he explains one of the motives

behind the creation of A Dance of the Forests: "I fmd that the main thing is

my own personal conviction or observation that human beings are simply

cannibals all over the world so that their main preoccupation seems to be

eating up one another. This I think is the main thing I would say was in the

back of my mind when I wrote it" (l'l3). The different portraits of A Dance

Of The Forests elucidate this argument of the author. The bestial nature and

brutality, selfishness and hypocrisy and the lust for power have been satirsed

through all the characters present here. Through the ancient emperor Mata

Kharibu, the dead warrior, Demoke Adenebi, and Rola - Soyinka conveys

this inclination of the human beings to betray one another. Similarly, the ants

and The triplets-End, Greater Cause and Posterity-also point at the base

intentons and self-deception inherent in man. The ants "emphasise the

ultimate fragility and futility of human endeavour since man never learns

from the lesson of the past" (Peters 168). The vigour with which the

historian justifies the war fought for the trousseau of the queen is noticable in

the modem dictators too who resort to war at the slightest provocation. They

quote so many utilitarian principles like progress, civilisation, democracy

and the like to defend the massacre of the people in a war. But these

references to "the good to come" (Peters 178) are yet another indication of

"the proneness of human beings to self-deception" (Peters 179). The Triplets

also reflect man's "specious justification of his acts of cruelty and

savagery"(l79). The message that Soyinka conveys through all these

character sketches is that the nature of human beings is to exploit the weak

and the innocent. Jonathan Peters has expressed it in a single sentence. "And

because the high moral force is only a varnish that covers the base intentions

underneath, the future will simply be a byproduct of violent past and

present" (183). Cannibalism has been made the central theme of many of his

works. It has been employed to refer to the cruel streak in human beings by

which the weaker and the less powerful are exploited by the stronger.

Madmen and the Specialists has used this as the central theme of the play.

Soyinka here powerfully satirises the use of political power,

especially the military force for jus t i~ ing the selfish ends. Warmongering

happens to be an ally of the political evil. The soothsayer had predicted the

possibility of bloodshed on account of unfavourable stars. But Mata Kharibu

persisted and this ended up in a warfare in which soldiers were even sold as

slaves. His unscrupulousness and inhumanity have reached an extreme end

that nobody can check his callous exploitation of the helpless subordiantes of

his kingdom.

Again, bribery is another evil practice that goes with political powers.

One evil supports and perpetuates another evil in feudal bureaucracy. This

was true in the past as it is true in the present. When Mata Kharibu

highhandedly decides to sell a few soldiers as slaves to a slave-dealer, the

Historian objects to it on the ground that the slave-dealer's bark is too small

to contain the large number of slaves. But when the slave-dealer bribes him

profusely, he alters his tone. The slave dealer tells the physician: "My new

vessel is capable of transporting the whole of Kharibu's court to hell when

that time does come. The Honourable Historian here can testify to it. I took

him abroad. . . . (Behind his back, he passes a bag of money to the historian,

who takes it, feels it and pockets it). . . . only this afternoon and showed him

every plank and rope. . . . ask him yourself' (54).

Such official corruption is not special to African past but happens to

be a ubiquitous phenomenon. Adenebi, the councillor accepted the bribe and

changed the capacity of his incinerator from forty to seventy which ended up

in the death of 65 passengers. This is how Obaneji narrates it: "That is why

they called it incinerator since yesterday - of the seventy people in it, five

escaped. It overwhelmed you see, and the body was built of wood. Dry and

brittle in the Hanrnattan season too. They were all on their way here to the

gathering of the tribes" (18).

The detailed analysis of the play reveals the complexity inherent in

the complicated plot of the work. Under the broad enveloping theme of the

contradictions of man's nature and the consequence of such contradictions,

the playwright has arranged numerous themes. Nature and function of art,

political corruption, war, the destruction of natural environment are some of

the themes dealt with. To treat this multiplicity of themes, Soyinka has

introduced a multiplicity of symbols. Man is the central figure in the play.

Man is represented by living men and women like Rola, Demoke, Adenebi.

Dead man and woman represent men as victimized by the tyrants and the all

powerful. The Half child is the ambiguous symbol of man's uncertain future.

A Dance of Forests encompasses philosophical themes such as the cycle of

repetition, the creative destructive duality of man, war as man's perennial

destiny. It includes such individualistic themes like human vanity, the will to

knowledge and power, predilection for messianism among priests and

leaders, exploitation of man by man and by the environment. These themes

are discussed sometimes with a seriousness and at other times with a sense of

humour. But, for the most part, it is poignant and bitter. It is appropriate to

quote Jonathan Peteres here:

It may seem that Soyinka's purpose in his major works is to

denigrate mankind by presenting an unflattering portrait of man's

history and destiny. But Soyinka merely wishes to call man to an

awareness of himself and his plight so that, through the effort of

his will he can alter his present senseless course, fraught with

needless pain of suffering, violence, deceit, lies and hypocrisy as

prelude to a new era of communication and peace founded on truth

and good will (166).

Only a strong sense of deterrninatiion and will power o d y can lead the good

leaders to their destination. Resistance to the unjust impositions of the rulers

by means of political activities as well as by memof creative, literary work

can help the people attain that self-awareness and self-realisation as in the

case of Demoke and Rola. Soyinka had envisioned a free society. It will not

be out of context to relate this to the Indian situation. Gandhi's "Hind

Swaraj' or "Indian Home ~ u l e ' b r i ~ i n a l l ~ written in Gujarathi analyses three

major concerns - the opposition between cultures and civilisation, political

methodology and the role of the individual. Gandhiji insisted that "progres~

by means of industrialisation will only enslave men through its seductive

comfort." "True civilisation," Gandhi argues, "is that mode of conduct which

point out to man the path of duty.. . To observe morality is to attain. mastery

over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves" (Hind

Swaraj; 55). Again, 'Swaraj' is viewed as personal will not as political

freedom. Jasbir Jain, explains the significance of "Hind Swaraj" succinctly

like this: 'Hind Swaraj' defines the concept of freedom, of subjectivity, of

civilisation, and projects soul - force as a necessary condition of sustaining a

value system. It connects political well-being with individual well being"

(Postcoloniality 26). Gandhi gave this important message to Indians through

his work: "If man will only realize that it is unmanly to obey laws that are

unjust, no man's tyranny will enslave him. This is the key to self rule or

home-rule" (72) What is emphasised is the individual's moral strength.

Soyinka seems to be giving the same message to his country men. He

is suggesting that to gain complete self-sufficiency, to achieve absolute

freedom the individuals have to rely on their own moral strength which, in

its turn, will strengthen them to question unjust laws. Much of Soyinka's

work is inseparable from his activities as a political dissident. Soyinka has

stated in his interview with Louis Gates that "I cannot conceive of my

existence without political involvement." (38). He traces his political

awakening to 1958, when he met the first generation of Nigeria's legislators

in London and realized that they meant to step into the shoes of the departing

white colonialists. He knew then and that "the fust enemy was within." In A

Dance of the Forests, written for the celebration of the Independence of

Nigeria Soyinka has given a critical estimate of his country's past rulers.

The intention of the playwright has been announced on many

occasions. This true protrayal of deceipt and treachery inherent in human

beings - whether black or white - has been made only to draw our attention

to it. It does not mean an acceptance of that situation. He welcomes

challenging situations by which, if possible, man can escape from "the

present senseless course, fraught with needless pain of suffering, violence

deceit, lies and hypocrisy. It should be taken only as a prelude to a new era

of communion and peace founded in truth and good will." (Peters 185).

In an interview held in Zimbabwe Soyinka stated that

A Dance Of The Forests was, of course, triggered by

independence, by my knowledge of the leaders who were about to

take over the reins of the country. I realized that after

independence some of those new rulers were going to act exactly

like their forebears did, just exploit the people. I was interested in

taking another look at that history and saying "The epigraph

should be tempered by the reality of the internal history of

oppression.' In other words I thought that Independence should be

a sobering look at history, not just euphoria and so on (68).

Soyinka warns the countrymen of the ill effects of neocolonialism. It can

become the worst form of imperialism. To quote Kwame Nkrumah,

"Neocolonialism . . . is the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise

it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it

means exploitation without redress."

Like his patron God, Ogun, Soyinka believed in action, in plunging

into the abyss and reappearing full of vitality and vigour. Kola Wole Ogung

Beshan observes, in his article, "Wole Soyinka. The Past and The Visionary

Writer" that in a 1965 essay entitled, 'And After the Narcissist", Soyinka had

condemned "the usual division between the poet (intellectual) and the

politician (Man of action). The essence of Ogun, the Yoruba God of war and

the creative principle, best reflects the true essence of the poet as a man of

action to discharge his contemporary responsibility" (184). He should either

voice the conscience of the country or withdraw to the background. "Soyinka

implored African writers to become the conscience of their nations or be

forced to withdraw to the position of chronicler and post-mortem surgeon"

(Progressive 367).

Quite unwilling to withdraw to the position of chronicler and post-

mortem surgeon, Soyinka projects his ideals for a new political order in

Nigeria through the chief medium, the dramatic hero. It is obvious that his

drama is devoted to the reordering of Nigerian political predicament. His

satirical approach towards leaders in A Dance of the Forests Kongi's

Harvest, A Play of Giants, The Opensore and King Baabu reveals that the

dramatist does not favour the existing type of African leader. Though no man

can be perfect, no man can be totally imperfect. Soyinka believed that the

Mican leaders are bent on exploiting the people, are keen only on

destroying, not anything else. This is well-illustrated in A Dance of the

Forests, Kongi's Harvest and A Play of Giants. In A Dance of the Forests,

the intention of the writer is to reveal the hypocrisy which threatened to

undermine the 1960 celebration of Nigerian Independence. His concern for

the political health of the country is obvious from the characters like Rola,

Adenebi and Demoke who hold visible positions in the social structure

which parallel their position in the past. Critics like Diedre L. Badijo even

suggest a link between Demoke and the author himself. Demoke was

commissioned to carve a totem to the ancestors where as Soyinka was

commissioned to produce a play that will project a glorious tradition. Just as

his dramatic hero is 'Ogun incarnate,' his political vision also draws much

from the concept of Ogun. Simon Obik Peko Umukro observes,

Soyinka's conception of the dramatic hero derives from the

qualities of Ogun, the Yoruba God of Iron and the patron of all

people who use iron. . . . Soyinka's dramatic hero is Ogun

incarnate, a kind of hero that may appropriately be called 'the

Ogun hero'. And the Ogun hero is the main interpreter of

Soyinka's political vision because that vision derives from the

heroic qualities of Ogun which the incarnate possesses and

demonstrates ( 1 73).

Again, the quest of the hero for justice is another aspect of Ogun. Ogun hero

fights for justice. In A Dance of the Forests Dernoke is faced with the

difficult question of fmding the rightful owner of half-child, the Dead

Woman or Eshuoro. He restores justice by giving the child back to its own

mother. The interpretation is stretched to the point of comparing the Dead

Woman to Nigeria and Eshuoro to the power of Britain. Like Ogun, the

Ogun hero, Demoke destroys and creates life. He murders Oremole. He

saves the half child from Eshuoro's violence. Though he destroys, he creates.

The main motive that inspires the dramatic hero is the restoration of justice.

Ogun is eager to dispense with humane, restorative justice. This is a primary

concern of Soyinka's dramatic heroes too. 'Moral Scheme' of the hero,

which has to do with justice is another aspect of the Ogun hero which offers

insight into Soyinka's political vision.

The decision of restoring the child back to its mother is a bold

decision, a decision which is risky and at the same time very important. This

draws our attention to another aspect of Ogun hero:- his desire to bring

victory to his community, "the hero's determination to take prodigious risks

to turn defeat into victory for his community" (Umukoro 177).

Soyinka suggests through Demoke, who hands over the child to its

mother, that "all creative responses in the postcolonial period needs to be

engaged with a process of rehabilitation, of restoration of identity, vitality

and creativity and moving from simple protest and resistance, go on to

provide an alterity" (Jain, "Post colonial Literature" 25). Since this process

has to be historicised and mythicised Soyinka found that only one myth can

combat the several myths of empire which promoted hegemonic structures.

That was the myth of Ogun, the patron god of Soyinka, who bravely risked

all the challenges of the abyss in order to bring harmony between men and

gods.

Demoke gives the half child to the Dead Woman. Hence Soyinka

suggests that the suitable political system for Nigeria should not be foreign.

It should be indigenous. "Soyinka suggests that for proper political

development Nigeria should adopt a political system which is indigenous

and primordial; and he charges his compatriots to fmd that system"

(Umukoro 18 1).

When Nigeria was granted independence in 1960, the political system

within Nigeria had some considerable work to do. It was really a difficult

task for Africa to change itself into a real nation, The writer who had to

voice the conscience of the country, who had to awaken an awareness in the

people found himself face to face with a hazardous job. He senses that his

fellow Africans are as dangerous or in fact more dangerous than a foreign

power. The corruption, folly and hypocrisy of the native rulers will prove

more fatal to the future of the country. Alan Jacobs has given an effective

explanation: "His (Soyinka's) contempt for 'the colonizing hordes,' whether

'Eurochristian or Arab - Islamic' knows no bounds, but he is equally

contemptuous when he turns his gaze on his fellow Africans. Wherever he

turns, he sees folly, hypocrisy, medacity, ineptitude, corruption and sadism.

He is a humanist disgusted by humanity." L 27) A

Viewing the play politically, A Dance of the Forests, does give us a

perceptive though it does not give us every answer to Africa's problems.

Asked to produce a play that would reflect the glorious past and forecast a

more glorious future, Soyinka created A Dance of the Forests. But his play,

instead of glorifying the past, deglamorises the past and instead of

forecasting a glorious future warns the people of "a bloody and fanged

future", because he had some doubts regarding the nature of his countrymen.

He has expressed himself vividly in one of his interviews:

They (the first set of legislators) could not wait to return home and

get a slice of 'independence cake7, because that was all

independence meant to them. Step fast into the shoes of departing

whites before other people got there. It was then that I began to

write A Dance of the Forests, which takes a jaundiced view of the

much-vaunted glorious past of Afi-ica And I suppose since then I

have been doing nothing but the dance macabre in this political

jungle of ours. (Jeyifo 63)

Soyinka's play as written for the independence celebration "presents an

apocalyptic vision of a dread future" which can be avoided, if it could be

avoided only by self sacrifice. He got more and more disillusioned later.

Soyinka grew all the more bitter after his experiences in the prison ten years

later. He was skeptic about his countrymen's intentions:

His skepticism of about uncritical glorification of tradition and the

honourable intention of the politicians shaped the thematic

develoment of the play. Here the role of the past in shaping the

present and the future became crucial because Soyinka raised the

questions of whose voices fi-om the past would be heard, those of

the victorious of the power structure or those of the power

structure itself. Thus the appearance of "the dead pair" at "the

Gathering of the Tribes" and the continuous rejection of

communities' uncritical glorification of the past doom the present

and the unborn generations of the hture (Badijo 666).

Soyinka7s perspective regarding politics underwent no major change even

after many years. The civil war, and the long line of despotic rulers who

came into power one after another proves the prophetic powers of the author.

The play does portray the insecurity that threatens the people of Africa. But

there are subtle suggestions as to how to tackle with the internal as well as

the external forces that threaten the existence of the nation. In a speech

delivered at the recently concluded summit of Nigerian Pro democracy

groups held at Johannesburg and in Oslo on Friday to Sunday, 29th to 3lSt

March 1996, Soyinka vehemently stated the possible ways of eliminating

these threatening forces.

If they are invaders from outer space, then we must evolve a

space-age strategy that will dislodge them and send them

spiralling back into the black hole that spewed them. If we

discover that they are none other than members of our own nation,

endowed with neither the authority of historic conquest nor the

voluntary empowerment by the people, then they must be

recognized for what they are - common felons, and thieves - for

what they have done is to steal from a common resource that was

entrusted to them, and convert it into an instrument of subjugation

against the collective owners ( 3 ) ,

With these barbs aimed at the power-crazy people of Nigeria who could

effect only a reversal of progress, Soyinka tried to attack hypocrisy, self

deceipt, and exploitation wherever he found it. The significance of A Dance

C Of The Forests lies in this that it is here that Soyinka first shows and

confms his political commitment "to the exposure of the maggots who

dwell beneath the compost heap" (Badijo 666). Though an attempt is made

by the writer not to mingle his political perspective with the aesthetic

purpose of the work of art, very strong element of political involvement in

his view of life can be seen. The cause is traced for this dominating presence

of the political ideologies by Soyinka himself. Politics was thrust upon him

because he was born into an unstable and disturbed society. Hence his works

contain some of the most powerful critiques of political, social and cultural

practices. Throughout we see that similar attempts are made to absorb

political and social realities into an imaginative pattern which will give them

meaning and at the same time accommodate creativity. When these political

ideas enter his major plays, they are reshaped by transplanting them from the

everyday references in order to perform a larger universal and moral role in

the drama of human freedom. The primary goal of the drama is the

rethinking of what it means to be an African in the modem world. He

understood that the degradation that has set in among the human beings was

not the case of Afi-ica alone. It was visible in all the parts of universe. Simon

Gikandi has quoted Soyinka's words from a key note address that he gave on

12 '~ April, 2000: "The situation in M i c a today was the same as in the rest of

the world, it is not one of the tragedies that came of isolated human failures

but the very collapse of humanity." Soyioka encourages a detached self-

examination which will lead to a self awareness not only for the Africans but

for the whole of humanity.

As in other plays, in A Dance Of The Forests too, Soyinka makes use

of his two literary modes, satire and tragedy. If there is complexity in his

tragedy, his satire delights in paradox. Soyinka observed in 1963, "Satire in

the theatre is a weapon not yet fully exploited among the contemporary

dramatists of Nigeria, fertile though the social and political scene is for well- q,b4 . , G P&-U

aimed barbs by the sharp observant eye." (?27). His barb aimed at the

corrupt sadist exploiters had the intention of awakening people from the state

of despondency in which they were. Listen to his own words spoken to

Biodun Jeyifo:

Nobody can say he's never been through moments of intense pain

or even of viewing what I've termed a recurrent cycle of

stupidities, an expression which distresses those who want human

experience to be so obviously and patently, without any

qualifications, optimistic. But what Nigerian today, what thinking

or feeling Nigerian this very moment that I'm talking looks at his

country and does not experience absolute despondency (qtd. in

Jeyifo XVII).

These words record Soyinka's anxiety and concern for the political health of

the new Nigeria. Eldred Jones has summed up Soyinka's message to the

Africans and also to the whole world, in his article "The Essential Soyinka":

"The message is to all men whether they fight with words or with nuclear

weapons. It is the warning of the court Historian of the court of Mata

Kharibu reenacted (123). It is a warning about the exploitative tendency of

man.

Soyinka is primarily a satirist. His gift for satire has been employed

mainly at the service of his essentially tragic vision of life. Soyinka uses his

weapon very effectively. The satiric turn of mind makes the play interesting

as well as thought provoking. It depicts an atmosphere which is horrifying

and pathetic. "Soyinka's satiric vision is a curious affair, partly Swift's,

savage indignation, partly the Conradian 'horror' and partly the

Wordsworthian lament over what man has made of man" (Peters 227). A

Dance of the Forests can be termed as the most complex satirical play of

Soyinka. Soyinka possesses the satirist's passionate and almost pathological

obsession for truth. A Dance of the Forests is a message for those who stand

in the present and drug themselves with memories of former glories like the

Orator Adenebi. He intends the play as a timeless warning for the natives. F.

Odun Balogun has remarked like this: "The depiction of repeatedly

reincarnating corrupt, selfish, dishonest exploitative leadership from the

history of the Tribe was nothing but a prediction of disaster should the post-

independence leadership fail to depart radically from the negative pattern of

it" (5 14). But he was not without hopes. No doubt he observes reality. But he

never evokes reality to create despair and disillusionment. He evokes reality

as a means of provoking positive action against the power syndrome that is

at the heart of the reversal of progress.

What Soyinka the artist does here is that he satirises the existing

bestial situation of the world and provides a deep awareness in the minds of

the people as to the existing situation in the world. For this, he has to assert

his will. But there is a slight contradiction in the fm conviction of the

assertion of the artists' will and the awareness of the cycle of tyranny.

Kolawole Ogungbesan observes,

Soyinka explains only how he is able to function as a citizen when

he says that expressions of pessimism in his works are simply a

statement of truth derived from a particular situation, but they do

not mean acceptance of that situation, nor do they preclude

challenge. As a corollary we can explain his creative efforts as

performing a therapeutic function, he attempts to exorcise despair,

and obtain mental balance by externalising his tragic awareness in

his works of art (Soyinka, "The Past," 187-188).

There is a warning that future prospects of mankind are not very bright. But

faint glimmers of hope are noticeable in the otherwise gloomy atmosphere.

The stage directions point out that the play ends when "it's fully dawn".

Dawn is symbolic of a new day, new cycle and the idea of regeneration.

Towards the end of the play, Rola has attained self awareness or liberation to

a certain extent. Demoke exemplifies the argument that collective change

and salvation can be brought by those individuals who learn how to exercise

their free will. Other works of Soyinka also clarify this point. His collection

of poems Iclanre highlights Soyinka's attitude towards life. As Bruce King

points out,

While there is a strong pessimistic streak in Soyinka's view of life,

it is not the facile pessimism which arises from an easy cynicism.

It is very much connected with Ogun, the Yoruba deity to whom

Soyinka turned, as European artists have turned to various muses

for inspiration and vision. Ogun, God of Iron war, harvest and the

creative essence is the subject of Soyinka's long poem.

Destruction is necessary if there is to be renewal (6).

Soyinka wanted to enlighten his people about their present situation and to Q

inspire them to work for a democracy. My struggle is a democratic struggle

in order to re-empower the people so that they will be the given choice and

the opportunity to participate. It is a struggle to terminate the tendency of

dictatorship in Nigeria" (Kreisler 10).

It is obvious that Wole Soyinka's works portray a static society in his

works. By showing the interdependence between the past, present and the

future and by resorting to devices which are typical of African riturals and

traditions, Soyinka does indeed give a moral direction and projects his vision

regarding the future of the country. What he recommended, it may be stated,

is that a stable and secure future can be constructed only with reference to

the past. The past must address the present - The past with its glories as well

as evils, the past which was rich with African rituals and myths. But in all

the plays of Soyinka from A Dance Of The Forests to King Baabu, this

veneration of the past is never nostalgic or motivated by cultural chauvinism.

Rather it is the attempt to discover through traditional features the actual

living languages (rituals) by which modern Nigerian consciousness can be

shaped. But he advocates a more dynamic use of ritual directed towards

change through reintegration. Soyinka was aware of the continuity that

existed between the historical roots of ritual and its function both in the

community and in the individual who belonged to that community.

Almost all the plays of Soyinka reveal an active and dynamic

integration of traditional myth and practice with contemporary concerns.

Traditional and modem elements are mixed to create distinctive works. In A

Dance Of The Forests, Soyinka's fust major play, we fmd a combination of

dancing and singing. The title itself is indicative of the fact that the play is to

take the nature of a dance. The representatives of the ancestors are to be

given a welcome for which Arony says "the forests consented to dance for

them". The dance is present from the beginning to the end of the play - the

dance of the villagers around the totem, the dance of the Half child, the

Dance of the Unwilling sacrifice. Ritual is added to dance. There are modern

devices like flash - backs, or a divided stage too.

L The galf-child of A Dance Of The Forests has its roots as in Kongi 'S

Harvest in the Yoruba myth of the Abiku, the child which is cursed to be

born again and again the anguish of the mother. She can neither prevent its

conception nor succeed in keeping it alive. The image of the Half-child is not

only mythical. It can also be considered as the symbol of the human

limitations and frustration that continuously torture human beings. The

image of the half child is highly symbolic. Soyinka sees the abiku child as

both 'a metaphor for the phenomenon of creativity' and 'an expression of

doom' ("Climates" 258). Taking it as a symbol of the 'doomed embryo' or

the 'new born, innocence' the half child represents from a postcolonial

perspective "the political immaturity, thwarted idealisms, and aborted

nationalism, and the failure of democracy to outlive independence". (Wright,

"Pre-and Post - Modernity" 10). This image of the half child is so suitable to

be applied to the newly independent Nigeria. To quote Derek Wright," in its

ambiguous two-way crossing between unborn and living, living and dead,

the abiku may signity the independent nation's passage into either life or

death; its unfulfilled promise or its perennial entrapment in a cycle of

inherited evils" (10). It is appropriate to quote Gareth Griffiths from A

Double Exile: "Thus the abiku child image unites with all other devices in

the play, including the structural skeleton of the past, present and spirit

worlds of action, as a complex image of the continuity of human limitations

and human frustrations in the developing Nigerian Experience" (152).

Archetypes may appear as motifs and images. They may be found in

even more complex combinations as genres or types of literature that

confirm with the major phases of the seasonal cycle. Northrop Frye in his

Anatomy of Criticism (1957) indicates the corresponding genres for the four

seasons as follows: The mythos of Spring: Comedy; The mythos of

Summer: Romance; The mythos of fall: Tragedy; The mythos of winter :

Irony

In Anatomy of Criticism, Frye speaks of Shakperian comedies like A

Midsummer Night 'S Dream where we find a shift from the normal world of

conflict and problems to the 'green world' - the world of forest or fairy

haunted wood. It is in this world of nature that the inustices and problems are

solved. Frye regards that phenomenon and also other characteristics like a

festive conclusion or a feast or dance as evidence that comic plots derive

from primitive myths and rituals that celebrated the victory of spring over

winter.

In A Dance of the Forests too there is a significant change in the

setting towards the world of forest where the representatives of the Dead, the \I-

living and the Wnbom meet to celebrate the gathering of the tribe. It is here

that Demoke, Rola and Adenebi undergo a kind of purifying ritual from

which Demoke emerges as the cleanest., Rola as the Cleaner and Adenebi as

the unchanged one. "The same seaming lightening cleared us all" Later

Demoke is saved by Ogun as he falls fiom heights. Viewed archetypally the

play might be interpreted as ending with an optimistic view of life where a

triumph of spring over winter takes place, of creation over destruction takes

place. There is a suggestion of the triumph of life over death.

A Dance Of The Forests can be considered as the most difficult and

complex among all the plays written by Wole Soyinka on account of its

archetypal characters, multiplicity of themes, complicated symbolism and

multi dimensional technique. Because of its complexity of theme and

technique, the play is likely to baffle the uninitiated reader. It is rather

difficult for any critic to decide its meaning equally successfully in all its

ramifications. The multiplicity of symbols and complexity of themes in A

Dance Of The Forests led Margaret Lawrence to remark that "There are

moments when the multiplicity of themes creates the feeling that there are a

few too many plates spinning in the air - some of them, speed by without

being properly seen, and some crash down." (63)

The play has been criticized for its complexity and obscurity caused

by plot-complications and allegorical sketches. But the significant position it

occupies among the works of the p ~ ~ ~ ~ l ~ n i a l period is evident from the

remark made by Gareth Griffiths in A Double Exile. "In time I am sure that

the fxst production of A Dance of the Forests at the independence

celebrations in Lagos in October 1960 will come to be seen as a date as

important to theatre in Afiica as the publications of Achebes' Things Fall

Apart has been to African novel" (146). Eldred Jones justifies the density of

the plot and multiplicity of themes with this explanation: "Each succeeding

reading produces insights which suggest a complete vision on the part of the

author. It thus seems very likely that Margaret Lawrence's expectations of

the play will be fulfilled, namely that what is obscure to us 'may seem

perfectly plain to the next generation of readers and play goers'. (Jones, The

writing 34). Further more, A Dance of the Forests has gained a significant

place in the postcolonial literatures. As a work which reinterprets and

reviews the past from the admirable vantage point of the present, (the

gaining of independence) the play defmitely emphasizes the need to

understand and critically evaluate the present, situated as it is in the context

of history. The reinter pretation of colonial history is also attempted in the

play. These two aspects are some of the chief concerns of 'Post colonial

discourses.'

In the foregoing analysis of the play an attempt has been made to

analyse the play based on the dramatic theory of Wole Soyinka which is

centered around the Ogun myth. Additionally, his unmasking and

demystifying of the Ogun or ancestors in A Dance Of The Forests represent

the artists own first plunge into the chthonic realm' that he discusses in

Myth, Literature and African World. The foregoing analysis of the play A

Dance of the Forests reveals Soyinka to be deeply rooted in the Yoruba

world, particularly in the world of Yoruba myth and philosophy. But their

significance lies in this fact that he is more concerned about examining their

relevance to contemporary Nigerian society. More than that, his interest lies

in exploring the possibility of their integrity and assimilation into the modem

world. Above all he uses Yoruba myth of Ogun to interpret and confront

present reality. A Dance of the Forests analyses deeply certain problems

which are particular to Nigeria. But all these problems can be applied to

humanity in general too. Themes like injustice, inhumanity, racism inside

and outside of his immediate environment which is Nigeria are all discussed

in A Dance of the Forests. The intention of the playwright is to show the

tragic plight of man in the totality of his experience. This experience

includes both physical and spiritual and also the past, the present and the

future. As Eldred Jones points out, "A Dance Of The Forests presents a

comprehensive view of man over a massive span of history; it even looks

into the future" (The Writing 32).

Like any other works of posGolonial literatures, A Dance of the

Forests too represents the struggles, passions and hopes that lay close to

colonised hearts. It also dramatizes moments of indigenous resistance. The

playwright knew that the current situation is a tragic situation. With his

wisdom and keen foresight, Soyinka predicted that both colonialism and

neocolonialism are classically tragic situations. He could foresee that lust for

power will defmitely lead to a society steeped in injustice. Soyinka warned

his men that it is difficult to formulate a system based on justice because the

society was used only to practising a 'just injustice.'

The detailed analysis attempted here seeks to prove that the elements

of traditional system are integrated into the writer's vision through the

mediation of a highly conscious art. A Dance of the Forests illustrates in the

best possible way how the materials of traditional cosmology can be used to

articulate an individual point. Yoruba belief in the unity and constant

interaction among the living, the dead and the unborn which are the

metaphysical points of reference and reincarnation become the vehicles to

examine the abuse of power by successive traditional elites. The analysis of

the play is conducted throughout with reference to the Ogun myth which has

always provided a central theme to his plays. Rightly does Thejumola

Olaniyan remark in "Dramatizing Post coloniality" that

If Soyinka's dramatic reputation today is largely as a mythopoeist

with an abiding proclivity for the ritual form it was A Dance and

not such earlier or concurrent plays as The Strong Breed, The Lion

and the Jewel or The Trial of Brother Jero that decisively

announced this with its deep immersion in and creative plunder of

Yoruba lore, mythology, performance traditions and thought

systems (490).

A reference also has been made to the influence upon Soyinka of the

Brechtian Theatre Theory, the theoretical views which Brecht formulated

concerning epic theatre and a non-Aristotelian dramaturgy: Viewed

archetypal1 A Dance Of The Forests stands as an illustration of Frye's

argument that plot forms of literary genre derive from primitive myths and

rituals that celebrated the victory of one season over another. A Dance of the

Forests like the other major works of Soyinka, The Road and Madmen and

Specialists "has a brilliant exposition of a profoundly pessimistic view of the

human condition." (Roscoe 48). A Dance Of The Forests projects the

political views that Soyinka had and the play proclaims the fust warning to

the natives of Africa against the exploitative nature of their leaders. The

playwright creates an awareness in the readers of the responsible duty of an

artist. Artists are the verbal antennae of a people. The awareness they distil1

and convert into the dynamics of language is somehow present in the

populace at large. We neglect it at our peril.